WS Top 100 Wines of 2008 - below $20
After the scandal involving a non-existent restaurant that won a Wine Spectator Award of Excellence, you may want to take the recently released Wine Spectator’s list of the 100 top wines of 2008 with a grain of salt.
First of all, the list is one of those things that are good to know but are hardly relevant particularly to the Filipino wine enthusiast. It's just another list and, like 1000 Places to See before You Die, it shouldn’t make you feel miserable about your land-locked existence or, in this case, the fact that you were born in a part of the world that doesn’t grow wine grapes, where Coke is believed to be the real thing and wine the drink of either the pretentious or the elite.
And worse, where you're not even likely to find any of the listed wines in local shelves.
Also, a good number are in a price range that can get you in a painful dilemma: spend that money on a bottle of wine or purchase a similarly priced ticket to a Jerome Philippon’s food and wine festival where at least 5 good wines are served with a 4-course dinner. The choice (at least mine) is obvious.
But if only to show that a wine need not be expensive to be good (if we are to believe WS) and, hopefully, peel off the elitist label attached to wine, I post here an abridged list: Wine Spectator’s Top Wines of 2008 below $20.
Now, if only I can find that $12 reisling from Clare Valley!
2 comments:
If I can, I, too, would rather spend money on Jerome's event than waste it on a copy of this WS issue.
I'm amazed at what a determined wine enthusiast can find locally in the Philippines. I was never much of a beer, gin, or Coke (reminds me of a potent mix drink there) drinker but growing up around Manila decades ago, I was able to find the odd bottle of Alsace, Spanish, and Bordeaux wines in supermarkets around Makati to satisfy my thirst. Now, there's a good number of fancy wine stores there.
The Leasingham might be available at Wine Depot. Never visited that store yet, but seems like they carry lots of Aussie wines. I walked into Premium Wine Exchange once and saw a good selection of Aussie wines as well.
Alex, your comment reminded me of how much fun I had hunting out wines in the old days. My best find was a most reasonably priced Barolo, in Rustan's Supermarket, Harrison Plaza! There were about 6-8 bottles. I got one and then came back the next day to wipe out the stock. But they were all gone! The expats must have bought them all. Remember, ADB was still on Roxas Boulevard.
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