Matt Walls: My top 10 wines of 2024

What feeling does an exceptional wine create when you drink it? It’s difficult to answer, as the greatest bottles give rise to all sorts of different sensations, insights and emotions.

It makes writing a ranking of this nature tricky, as not all the wines are being measured on the same scale. Some excel thanks to the pleasure they give, others might capture the spirit of an extraordinary site and certain wines teach us something new.

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But it’s certainly fun to try – thinking back over the best wines I’ve tasted this year has been an indulgent treat.

First, let’s consider pleasure. It’s the easiest factor to measure. The scale starts with that most basic, four-letter word – nice. There are many everyday wines that deliver a pleasurable mouthful but demand no more effort from us.

At the other end of the scale there are wines that trigger a cascade of aromas, textures and other wonderful sensations, otherworldly nectars that cause our eyes to roll back into our heads – wines like Château Rayas 2012.

Seeking pleasure

Seeking pleasure is surely the most common reason to reach for a bottle, but open a wine at the right moment and it can deliver not just on a sensual level, but on an intellectual one too. That’s something that most of the wines on my list share – they were drunk during a favourable period during their evolution.

Wines can be delicious when young, but the greatest terroirs often only reveal themselves fully when the youthful fruit has dropped away. Older wines offer an array of complex, savoury, umami notes and share secrets of a great site that young wines rarely divulge.

Tasting Jean-Paul Jamet’s Côte-Rôtie 2000 brought the uniqueness of this sacred slope into spine-tingling focus.

Not all wines that made the cut were mature, however. Some wines, even if not yet in their ideal drinking window, create a deep sense of awe and wonder. That’s what bagged Vincent Paris’ Cornas La Geynale 2010 a spot on the list.

And it also explains why this 100-pointer didn’t make the number one spot – though it might do some time in the future.

The curveball

The Domaine L’Anglore Tavel Vintage 2015 is the curveball, a wine that’s all about texture, tension and salinity – and the first rosé (or, more accurately, clairet) to make it onto my annual list.

It’s a wine that reminded me of the brilliance of Eric Pfifferling, a man whose influence on Tavel is second to none. He unearthed the secrets of Tavel’s illustrious past – and creates wines that give hope for its future.

Sometimes even if you have tasted a wine before, when you open the bottle, it simply doesn’t perform. This can be caused by countless factors, from temperature to glassware to – some say – atmospheric pressure.

So when I took a gamble on a very young Bernard Faurie Hermitage Bessards Méal 2019 for a group of wine lovers – and everybody was wowed – I was relieved, elated and grateful to Bernard. That he recently retired made drinking it all the more profound.

It’s the only wine on my list that isn’t mature. But ready or not, it still offered sublime pleasure and a glimpse into Bernard’s unique vision of Hermitage – one that none of us will ever forget.

Matt Walls’ top 10 Rhône wines of 2024:

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