Gourmet-Alcohol

Wine Enthusiast’s Best of Year Lists We’re serious about great wine, spirits and more. Explore our top lists in the categories below. Our Expertise The Wine Enthusiast Tasting Panel , which includes expert drinks professionals whose expertise spans the world’s most important regions, blind tastes and rates more than 25,000 wines, hundreds of spirits and other drinks annually using a 100-point scale. Our Process All lists are editorially driven and selected. There is no nomination or submission process, nor a fee associated with inclusion in any list. Many factors are considered, including price, distribution of region, wine types and varieties and availability. Note: Starting in September 2024, there is a processing fee of $65 per SKU to submit a wine or spirit for review. This processing fee goes directly toward supporting the new Wine Enthusiast Ratings Platform , producing the buying guides for producers and readers and upholding the blind-tasting standards

If you want to turn a cocktail into a celebration, splash in some sparkling wine . “When you add it to a cocktail, it adds dryness and acidity —but it also delivers an entire mood, a vibe,” explains Elva Ramirez, author of Sparkling: Champagne and Sparkling Cocktails for Any Occasion (Union Square & Co.). “It makes everything more special and memorable.” History supports that celebratory spark: Wine, and later Champagne , was the customary quaff after France’s royal coronations. That enthusiasm for bubbly spilled over to America, becoming a symbol of aspirational luxury and style during the Gilded Age of the late 19th century. As the cocktail renaissance dawned, sparkling wine and mixology soon became entwined, with Champagne cocktails appearing in influential early books like William “Cocktail” Boothby’s 1891 American Bartender guide. Today, Champagne and other sparklers are considered an “everyday luxury,” Ramirez says. Selecting the right bubbly to include in a cocktail