There is no single formula for identifying great value when it comes to wine. Growing conditions, vintage variations, winemaking styles and personal tastes can all change from year to year, making any hard-and-fast rules difficult to pin down. What is clear is that a range of high quality wines are being made around the world at affordable prices. That’s why, for the fourth year in a row, we’ve enlisted Wine Spectator’s team of editors to select the top values of the past 12 months.
How do producers making such good wines keep their costs down and their production figures up? It’s different from region to region, but our process of selection focuses on wines that express the distinctive character of a specific appellation or variety while keeping prices low through innovative methods in the vineyard and cellar.
The list of the Top 10 Values of 2024 is capped by our choice for Wine Value of the Year. All of the wines rated 90 points or higher on Wine Spectator’s 100-point scale, cost $40 or less and were made in large-enough quantities to be widely available. The wines on this list all showcase top-tier winegrowing regions at their most budget-friendly, each of them finding a way to overdeliver on quality for the price. We hope you’ll take this opportunity to explore a new category or find your next go-to bottle. Read on for our Wine Value of the Year!
View the full list of the Top 10 Values of 2024!
SEGHESIO
Zinfandel Sonoma County 2022
93 points | $26 | 112,500 cases made
Sonoma County is the epicenter of California Zinfandel, and there are few wineries as synonymous with Sonoma Zin as Seghesio. The roots of the winery’s connection to the variety date back 130 years to when Italian immigrant Edoardo Seghesio planted his first vineyard in what is now Alexander Valley.
The Seghesio family no longer owns the winery, but the commitment to Zinfandel hasn’t waned. Winemaker Andy Robinson and his team craft several vineyard-designated Zins such as Home Ranch and Montafi, but this Sonoma County bottling is built for the masses and sells at a crowd-pleasing price. It helps that Robinson has 350 acres of estate vineyards at his disposal, although about half the county blend is fruit purchased from trusted growers—another way to control costs.
“The Sonoma County is usually about 40 percent Alexander Valley, 40 percent Dry Creek Valley and then maybe 20 percent Russian River,” Robinson says of the various grape sources. “Alexander Valley has a darker fruit profile and more soft tannins. The black cherry portion and some of the backbone tannins on the finish come from Dry Creek, and the Russian River vineyards are some of our youngest, so they give us a super youthful, lively, fruity character and acidity.”
The 2022 bottling is about 88 percent Zinfandel, while a mix of grapes such as Petite Sirah and Alicante Bouschet make up the rest. It was a hot vintage with a record-breaking heat dome settling in during September. “A hot vintage can give you really lush fruit, and I don’t mind that,” Robinson says. “But I didn’t want to get the detractive part and overextract a bunch of tannin.”
The grapes for the wine were harvested in about 150 different small lots and fermented on the skins for about 10 days with a mix of punch-downs in open-top fermenters and pump-overs in larger tanks. “It goes to barrel still sweet and finishes primary and malolactic fermentation in the barrel.”
Zin producers often mask excess tannins with oak, but Robinson mostly shies away from using new oak barrels. This is as much a stylistic choice as a method of cost savings. “Winemakers tend to say, ‘Oh, we got a lot of tannin. We need to put more oak on it.’ And then you’ve got two bad things going, in my mind—too much tannin and oak.”
The Sonoma County blend is aged for 10 months in primarily American and French barrels (93 percent), with only 7 percent in new American oak. There is some trickle-down of new French oak from the single-vineyard wines that don’t make the final cut, but that is typically a small percentage.
Although the Sonoma County bottling ages well, it is immediately accessible. “It needs to be ready to drink on release,” Robinson says. “There’s an overall trend of what consumers want to drink, and they’re not gravitating toward huge, heavy wines right now. I want to be cognizant of that. I don’t want to see Zinfandel pigeonholed with the big, inky black fruit bombs.”
Tasting Note: Vivacious and briary, this Zin is generous with personality, offering blackberry, licorice and orange peel accents that zip along the zesty finish. Drink now through 2032. 112,500 cases made.—Tim Fish
Issue: August 31, 2024
WineSpectator.com members: Find more great Sonoma Zinfandels and learn more about the variety.
- California Zinfandel Tasting Report: Zinfandel Windfall (Oct. 15, 2024)
- Exploring Old Vine Zinfandel with Tim Fish (Sep. 30, 2024)
- Vertical Tasting: 50 Years of Ridge Lytton Springs (Dec. 3, 2024)
- Rethinking Zinfandel in Sonoma with Tim Fish (Nov. 15, 2022)
- Wine Ratings Search: Sonoma Zinfandel, 90+ Points (rated in the past 12 months)
- Wine Ratings Search: Sonoma Zinfandel, 85+ Points and $50 or less (rated in the past 12 months)
