James Suckling Top 100 2026: The List and the Scores

The James Suckling Top 100 2026 came out on October 30, and its first surprise is at the very top: the Wine of the Year scored 99 points, not 100. Château de Beaucastel’s 2024 Châteauneuf-du-Pape leads a list where every wine scored 99 or 100, chosen from almost 40,000 bottles tasted in twelve months. Here is the full list with every score, how the scoring works and which of the estates you can actually visit.

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How the James Suckling Top 100 2026 was chosen

This is the world list, the last of the season’s Top 100 reports on JamesSuckling.com, which also publishes separate country lists for Italy, France and other producing nations. The team rates on the 100-point scale, where 95 and above means a must-buy. For the world selection, Suckling says four things counted: the rating, the price, how easy the wine is to find, and what he calls the wow factor, the emotional pull of the first sip.

Two rules were new this year. Every wine had to score 99 or 100 points, which is why some country number ones did not make the cut and some countries are missing altogether. And the team tried to keep bottles under $400, with most around $100 to $150. The theme Suckling chose for the year was finesse: wines that are a pleasure to drink now rather than monuments to power.

The full list: 100 wines and their scores

Ranks and scores as published by JamesSuckling.com; the tasting notes are on the official Top 100 report. The top 20 are below, and positions 21 to 100 open underneath.

The top 10, wine by wine

No. 1, Château de Beaucastel Châteauneuf-du-Pape 2024. Suckling has followed Beaucastel since 1985 and calls the 2024 “a Châteauneuf for today but a tribute to the past.” The vintage was cool and wet after two scorching years, and the wine is medium-bodied, with rose petal and raspberry rather than heat. The vineyards are biodynamic and Demeter-certified, and production runs past 8,000 cases, so it is a Wine of the Year you can actually buy.

No. 2, Eredi Fuligni Brunello di Montalcino 2021. A pure sangiovese from a classic Montalcino family, in what Suckling calls probably the best Tuscan vintage since 2010. No. 3 is a Rheingau riesling, the Robert Weil Kiedrich Gräfenberg Spätlese 2025, which Wilhelm Weil told him may be the best spätlese of his career. No. 4, the Figgins Walla Walla Valley Estate Red 2023, is the Washington pick, praised for being drinkable already.

From No. 5 to No. 7 the list travels: Leeuwin Estate’s Art Series Chardonnay 2023 from Margaret River, the Niepoort Vintage Port 2024 from the Douro, and Catena Zapata’s White Stones Chardonnay 2024 from the Adrianna Vineyard in Gualtallary, high in Mendoza’s Uco Valley. No. 8, Kistler’s Hyde Vineyard Chardonnay 2024, is the first 100-point wine on the list. No. 9 is the right-bank Bordeaux, Château Pavie-Macquin 2023, from chalky hillsides beside the town of Saint-Émilion, and No. 10 closes with Champagne: Charles Heidsieck’s Blanc des Millénaires 2017, a blanc de blancs made only in exceptional years.

What the 2026 list says about the year

The 100 wines come from 11 countries. The United States leads with 33, ahead of France with 18, Australia with 13 and Italy with 12; Argentina has eight and Germany seven, New Zealand and Spain three each, and Portugal, South Africa and Slovenia one apiece. California alone accounts for 28 wines, 14 of them from Napa Valley, while Bordeaux places nine and Tuscany eight.

The vintages behind the selection are worth noting if you buy or travel by them: 2023 in the United States and France, 2024 and 2025 in Germany, Portugal and New Zealand, and 2021 for Brunello di Montalcino, which puts two Brunellos in the top 15. Whites do unusually well, with five chardonnays and three rieslings in the top 20.

How Suckling’s scores differ from Wine Spectator’s

Both lists use the 100-point scale, and both say plainly that the rank is not the score. The proof this year is in the table above: the first seven wines all scored 99, while eight 100-point wines sit between No. 8 and No. 18. Across the whole list, 19 wines scored 100 and none of them is No. 1. Price, availability and the wow factor moved them down, or moved the Beaucastel up.

The differences are in the method. The Wine Spectator Top 100 is built from blind tastings by its editors, filtered for quality, value, US availability and an “X-factor,” and revealed as a countdown. Suckling’s team tastes across the year and around the world, often at the wineries themselves, and this year set a hard floor of 99 points. That makes his list shorter on bargains and longer on wines with a story the critic has followed for decades. For a third, very different approach, Italy’s guides award symbols rather than points, as in Gambero Rosso’s Tre Bicchieri.

Estates on the James Suckling Top 100 2026 you can visit

Several of the top 20 sit in wine regions built for travelers. These are the ones where the estate or an official tourism source says how to get in.

Château de Beaucastel, Châteauneuf-du-Pape. The Perrin family’s public door is the Boutique Famille Perrin on Place du Portail, in the village of Châteauneuf-du-Pape itself. Go in summer and you will hear what Suckling heard: American accents in nearly every cellar, from a country that still buys about one bottle in three.

Eredi Fuligni and San Filippo, Montalcino. Two of the top 15 come from the same hill town. Fuligni asks visitors to get in touch to arrange a cellar visit, and San Filippo also runs a wine resort on its estate. Montalcino is the easiest place on the list to build a trip around: our pick of Brunello tastings in Montalcino covers the cellar doors that take bookings, and Montalcino estates with rooms lets you sleep among the vines.

Château Pavie-Macquin, Saint-Émilion. The No. 9 wine grows on the slopes right next to the medieval town, one of the most walkable wine villages in France. Our guides to Saint-Émilion wine tours and where to stay in Saint-Émilion cover the logistics.

Catena Zapata, Mendoza. Argentina’s official tourism board describes the winery’s Maya-style pyramid, a guided tasting of the top labels in its cellar, and Angélica Cocina Maestra, a restaurant with a Michelin star and a Michelin green star. Kistler, Sonoma County. The winery hosts guests by appointment at its Trenton Roadhouse in Sebastopol, a short drive from the other Sonoma County wineries worth booking. Champagne lovers chasing the No. 10 bottle can start with our list of Champagne houses to visit.

Using the list to plan a wine trip

The James Suckling Top 100 2026 is a shopping list first, but it also tells you where the year’s most talked-about wines are made. This one points at three easy trips. Montalcino has two of the top 15 in the same commune, and the rest of Tuscany wine country is an easy drive away. Saint-Émilion pairs the No. 9 wine with a town you can explore on foot. And with 14 Napa wines on the list, Northern California remains the closest answer for American readers.

Whatever you choose, book cellar visits before flights where you can: the most famous estates on any list take few visitors, and an appointment is what turns a bottle you read about into a glass you remember.

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Related reading

Wine Spectator Top 100 2026: How the List Works Montalcino Estates With Rooms: 7 Brunello Wine Stays Brunello Tastings in Montalcino: 8 Cellar Door Visits