Yet another Top 50 Wine Brands list

This one is from Drinks International, and it is a list of "Most Admired Wine Brands" in the world.

Notice it is named "Most Admired", but is still listed as 1 through 50. In order of,,,Idano...overall admiration on a numerical scale. There is a insert telling the reader how the came to their choices, however.

I'm feeling elite right now, since I've had all but three of those admired brands. (Leyda, Abadal, and Felix Solas, in case you'r wondering. But keep in mind that "elite" is a slippery word, since this list includes Yellow Tail, Woodbrige and some others that might not be considered too awfully elite.

http://www.headley.co.uk/headturner/AdmiredWines2015

I think I have tasted or owned about 28-34 of those. I see Fetzer made the list.

strange list, but I didn't read criteria, and obviously written from business sense not winegeek.

Love the "you are one of the most admired brands, wanna buy an ad?" ethos

I think I've tasted 46 - missed the same 3 as Hoke, plus Cono Sur

[Robin Garr]

strange list, but I didn't read criteria, and obviously written from business sense not winegeek.

Love the "you are one of the most admired brands, wanna buy an ad?" ethos

I think I've tasted 46 - missed the same 3 as Hoke, plus Cono Sur

Yeah, I've had most of them too. I didn't keep count, but I expect I'm in the 40s, and probably most of us are.

Definitely an industry publication, and IMO the list is meaningless. Big sellers with a few big names salted in. I wonder if the heavy-hitters were chosen strictly on merit, or perhaps more likely, they share distributors with some of the plonk labels on the list.

[Jenise]

Big sellers with a few big names salted in. I wonder if the heavy-hitters were chosen strictly on merit, or perhaps more likely, they share distributors with some of the plonk labels on the list.

You have to wonder. On almost no other list will you ever find both Lindemans and Cheyval Blanc. Doesn't even make sense.

Btw, those I haven't had: Abadal, Le Pin and Trapiche. And I had Barefoot before Gallo bought the brand, so in a sense it hardly counts. It's not the same Barefoot.

Oops, make that 6, I haven't had Le Pin or McGuigan either (never heard of latter).

The randomness is just weird. From a business power/fame of the name I can see a list with things like Barefoot, Trapiche, etc co-existing with Lafite and Cheval Blanc. But then Le Pin? Latour for the only Burg, over DRC on high end or on bigger scale Jadot or Drouhin?

And of course Prum or Donnhoff are not worthy, being German.

Is only Italian listed Tig, which is a single wine, not a brand?

I agree, Dale. It does seem like a...disparate collection of brands...and they are clearly specifying brands, not wines.

But the whole concept of choosing a brand to admire is already entirely different than choosing a wine. Whatever "admire" means here.

I went back and read the expo and, frankly, they were never that clear as to what their criteria were. They do list four or five points of consideration, but honestly, they were vague to the point of being meaningless. Or gobbledygool.

The system was, um, strange as well. Choose 202 judges, show them the previous lists of 'most admired' and ask them to choose their top three. The judges can also "write in" a candidate of their own choice and exlain why. When the votes are all tallied a "small jury" (doesn't say who, or how many, or what they discuss, but of course no mag/website would ever let financial or political decisions have any bearing on such decisions, of course) gets to finalize the ranking.

And the website/mag then, in time-honored tradition, notifies each of the brands they have won---and urges them to take special advantage of this opportunity to run a full-page ad at special rates right next to the article.!!!!

So it all comes down to print/web using marketing to support brands which supply revenue.

And you're right again: with no focus and no coherency---other than "it's wine"---there's no reason beyond revenue for this list to exist.l

I can't see the point of this sort of exercise. They are obviously concentrating on financial heavy hitters, but even so they are confusing the genres, ranging from trophy wines like Bordeaux grands crus on the one hand to mass market industrial wine firms on the other. It's like making a league table of the art market ranging from Picasso to mass market decoration.

Wow! One is 15 miles from me. I didn't know that Inniskillen was so widely distributed. I stop there in the Fall, as it's right around the corner from a presshouse where I buy some fine quality juice for my home wine making, but I usually pick up a dry red (Gamay or Cab Franc).