A Closer Look at Seattle Metropolitan's 100 Best Wines
In the September edition of Seattle Metropolitan magazine, there is a cover story featuring the "100 Best Wines of the Northwest". Being a data junkie, I thought it might be useful to conduct an analysis of this list of 100 recommended wines to see what resulted. Before getting to the findings, it is worth sharing the approach Seattle Met took in determining this list of favorites.
Here is how the magazine described the methodology:
"With 943 wineries in Oregon and Washington, how did Seattle Met pick the best 100 bottles? We enlisted Jacksonville, Oregon-based wine expert Conde Cox, who visited wineries from Willamette Valley to Woodinville, and teamed up with Washington vino expert Jay Miller--the Northwest nose for famed wine journalist Robert Parker--to sip and spit his way through hundreds of the best Washington bottles. Cox modified the five-factor system used by the Institute of Masters of Wine to rate each sample based on balance, complexity, intensity of flavors, varietal character, and palate persistence."
Seattle Met also mentions that Mr. Cox "braved serious palate fatigue from tasting over 1,000 different bottles". Based on these disclosures, one could assume that the top 100 wines represent 10% of the bottles sampled. Also, with 943 wineries producing about 4 different bottles of wine each, one could assume that approximately 4,000 different wines exist in our region. Therefore, it appears the sample set was about 25% of the total population of wines available from Oregon and Washington.
As to the data analysis, one of the more interesting findings was the frequency of producers listed in the top 100. Overall, there were 63 different wineries featured in the list, with 21 of these having two or more wines featured. In fact, these 21 wineries represented 59 of the 100 wines recommended, suggesting a disproportionate frequency relative to the 943 wineries that operate in the region surveyed. Finally, the frequency of producers located in the Willamette Valley and Woodinville confirms the statement that Mr. Cox's winery visits were concentrated in these two areas.
In terms of variety representation, pinot noir was the leader with 36 wines, followed by syrah with 17, cabernet sauvignon with 15, merlot with 5, and riesling, grenache, and chardonnay each with 4.
Based on the variety data above, it should come as no surprise that 44 of the 100 wines are from the greater Willamette Valley AVA (including sub-AVAs), with another 44 coming from the greater Columbia Valley AVA (including sub-AVAs).
Finally, the Seattle Met's list of recommended Northwest wines is focused on recent vintages, with 49 wines from 2006 and 35 from 2005. Only 16 wines were from vintages 2004 and older.
In looking at these results, it is clear that this purported list of "best wines" from the Northwest has a bias toward Willamette Valley and Woodinville producers. This is not to say that this is good or bad, rather it is to suggest Mr. Cox has a particular fondness for pinot noir from the Willamette Valley and cab/syrah/merlot from Woodinville wineries. Which leads me to the larger point of conducting this analysis and sharing these results with you.
As I mentioned in an earlier post on why being "best" no longer matters, anytime the media publishes a list like this, it is important to understand the inherent bias and subjectivity involved. For example, this is about as close to a list of "best" Northwest wines as my wine recommendations are on this blog.
As such, Seattle Met would be more precise in crafting a headline such as "Conde Cox's Northwest Wine Recommendations", but this probably would not sell a lot of magazines. At the end of the day, if this list of recommended Northwest wines puts you on a path toward new discoveries or aligns your wine preferences with that of a particular critic, then it has served a useful purpose.
But please don't limit yourself to just this list, thinking it's the "best" that our region has to offer. There are clearly many standouts on this list, but there remain a number of outstanding wines amongst the 4,000 or so bottles produced in Oregon and Washington.
Comments
Any best WA wine list that leaves out Cayuse loses all credibility with me!
Posted by: Jared | September 19, 2008 11:42 AM
Jared, which Cayuse wines in particular would you expect to see on a list of recommendations? Thanks for posting a comment.
Posted by: Thad W. | September 19, 2008 04:03 PM
With practically every wine made by Chaleur Estates, Betz, and Leonetti on the list I just couldn't believe Christophe didn't garner any attention. The only explanation I can think of is that they didn't get to taste any of the wines. I would certainly expect to see the Bionic Frog and En Chamberlin Syrah on any WA State 100 best.
Posted by: Jared | September 24, 2008 08:09 AM
This is an awesome analysis! Thank you for taking the time to break it down. I blogged about the list awhile ago -- the results seemed surprising to me. But I couldn't find the time to analyze why -- thank you so much for doing it for me!
Cheers!
Margot
Posted by: Margot-Write for Wine | September 26, 2008 01:51 PM
As the author of the listing and article that you examine, please let me make a couple of comments:
First, you never contacted me for input, which you should have sought out, for complete information.
Second, I intentionally limited my tasting for this article to currently available wines; this is the reason that the listing was limited to recent vintages and did not include any older, now-unavailable ones.
Third, many of the best washington wines come from vineyards that are of course not located in woodinville walla walla, even though many of the top wines are made there; indeed, many washington wines that are of top quality seem to come from the mid columbia valley, such as the Woodward Canyon Old Vines wine, which comes from fruit grown in the Champoux vineyard that is located between Prosser and the Columbia River.
Fourth, your listing and pie charts showing where my list of recommended wines are from fails to identify which AVAs from which the fruit was sourced for each wine, such as Rattlesnake Hills or Walla Walla.
Fifth, I specifically asked Cayuse owner Christophe Baron for samples for this article, but he failed to get them to me; I later sampled his current release wines at the winery, but not until late in 2008, (long after my deadline for the article), when he stated to me that his reasons for his earlier non-response and failure to get me samples was that he just does not often check his email. I have listed the current release Cayuse wines and recommended them in my upcoming January 2009 Seattle Metropolitan column. I wanted to limit the list to currently available releases, so I did not include earlier vintage (not currently available Cayuse wines that I had tasted years earlier.
Finally, I will note that Seattle Metropolitan magazine failed to let me review their description of my methodology, which I did not write; some of the points that I make in this email would have been included in such a description, had I been given the opportunity to write it myself or had I been given a chance to see such description or to edit it, which I was not given to me before publication.
If you or your readers would like further clarifications from me about my methods or my listing in that article, I would be happy to provide it.
Posted by: Conde Cox | December 21, 2008 02:21 PM
Conde,
Thanks for expounding on your approach and sharing your thoughts on my analysis of your list of recommended wines.
Your statement, "you never contacted me for input, which you should have sought out, for complete information.", leaves me a bit perplexed for I never realized I was under such an obligation. When it comes to sharing my experiences with wine, whether drinking or reading about it, I blog in hopes of initiating or extending the dialogue on a particular topic. Nothing more, nothing less.
Granted, those that write about wine for a living might be under such an obligation, especially those who call themselves journalists. For the record, I am not a journalist, nor do I pretend to be one with this blog. I am merely a wine consumer, who has a fondness for Oregon and Washington wines and a desire to share these experiences with others.
Regardless, I would hope that you and the folks at Seattle Metropolitan magazine can take from my analysis a learning experience that will help improve these types of lists going forward. Whether it's clarifying methodology used to determine the list or providing more transparency on the style of wine you prefer, these efforts will go a long way with those reading these types of lists.
Finally, you suggested I did not cover AVAs in my analysis, where in fact this was a highlight in my pie charts. Please see the second to last, which breaks down the AVAs covered in your list. Granted, I rolled up Columbia Valley and Willamette Valley sub-AVAs into each, which in hindsight, should have been detailed to give credit to these places.
I very much appreciate you sharing a comment and welcome your further commentary on this and other posts here at BeyondtheBottle.com. And by all means, keep up the good work connecting us to Oregon and Washington wines!
Posted by: Thad W. | December 22, 2008 04:51 PM