I make the same New Year’s resolution year after year. That is to ignore The Wine Spectator Top 100 Wines of the Year. It’s too ridiculous to get worked up about. America is a country that lives on bad food so it’s a waste of energy to get upset about the absurdity that is their Top 100. What’s a little more bad taste.

Yet I always had this little fantasy of blind tasting The Wine Spectator editors on their Top 100. It would be all to easy as the results would be guaranteed to embarrass them. Like shooting fish in a barrel.

So every year I resolve to ignore this farce, but something always seems to remind me of its fundamental dishonesty. This year it was the Top 100 in the San Francisco Chronicle. The reason it’s so frustrating is that The Chronicle got is so right, while The Spectator gets it so wrong. The Chronicle has no absurd rankings or points, but only a list of their favorite wines of various varieties. In other words a logical and responsible point of view. Something in sharp contrast to the arbitrary Spectator rankings.

While we never may get the Spectator editors into the barrel so we can take pot shots at them, I guess it’s important to remember every year when The Wine Spectator’s Top 100 comes out that there is something fishy about it.

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