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Perhaps the best German Pinot Noirs of all time, some world-class Rieslings and other great wines from 25 categories: Here are our winners from around 7,200 tasted samples.

At wein.plus, a tasting season lasts from spring to spring, whereby the transitions are always fluid, which makes exact statistics difficult. While the old tasting year comes to an end with the wines from South Tyrol and the last samples from Germany and Austria, the new one begins with the current Brunello di Montalcino and the first young wines from Germany and our European neighbours.

As these inaccuracies are repeated every year, they hardly have any significant influence on the significance of our statistics. Over the past twelve months, we have tasted almost 7,200 wines in our tasting room in Erlangen, all of them blind, a large proportion of them several times. Well over half of these - around 4,200 wines - scored very good with scores of 85 to 89, while a further 1,750 were "excellent" with scores between 90 and 94. As we still interpret the rating system in its original sense and do not participate in the widespread inflation of points, the number of truly great wines with 95 points or more is correspondingly low: There are 105. Just over 1,000 wines were rated "good", i.e. with scores of 80 to 84, and only 68 samples were passable or even unsatisfactory.

A first:
Three times 100 points in one season

For the first time, three wines were awarded a perfect 100 points in one year, including - also a first - two wines from a single producer: The Keller winery from Flörsheim-Dalsheim has produced two of the greatest dry Rieslings we have ever tasted, "G-Max" and Pettenthal. The third wine is a fantastic Rieslaner Trockenbeerenauslese from the Müller-Catoir winery in Neustadt-Haardt in the Palatinate. In total, the 100 points have only been awarded 17 times in the 25-year history of the wein.plus wine review.

The fact that, despite our conservative application of the evaluation system, so many of the wines submitted receive at least very good marks is partly due to the significant increase in average quality over the past 25 years, but also to the fact that, for capacity reasons, we can now only invite producers to submit samples that we expect to perform convincingly. Only our Business Premium members are allowed to submit unsolicited wines at any time. As we take a lot of time for the wines and taste a considerable number of them at least twice and exclusively blind in our tasting room in Erlangen, we would not be able to carry out a serious wine evaluation without this restriction.

Of all the wines submitted, those from German wine-growing regions made up the largest group with 4,500 samples, followed by Italy with over 1,200 and Austria with just over 900 samples. We received around 320 wines from France, followed at some distance by Spain, Romania and Switzerland as well as eight other European countries.

In terms of wine types, white is clearly ahead with 4,300 samples, followed by red with just under 2,300. 275 samples of sparkling wine (including PetNat) were submitted, significantly more than rosé and Pinot Blanc, which totalled 190 wines. The family of so-called natural wines is represented by 71 samples, that of non-alcoholic wines by 15. 25 sparkling wines/frizzante were tasted, as well as very small quantities of Rotling, Schillerwein, liqueur wine and Badisch Rotgold.

 

Our wines of the year

Below we present the best wines of the entire tasting season, categorised by grape variety, wine type and/or origin. We have endeavoured to come as close as possible to the "top ten" in each category. However, as we have no further hierarchy within a points category, we were rarely able to select exactly ten wines.
Tasting season 2024/2025 Dry white wines

2024/2025 tasting season - dry white wines Riesling

2024/2025 tasting season - dry white wines Pinot Blanc

Tasting season 2024/2025 - Dry white wines Pinot Gris

Tasting season 2024/2025 - Dry white wines Chardonnay

Tasting season 2024/2025 - Dry white wines Sauvignon Blanc

Tasting season 2024/2025 - Dry white wines Silvaner

Tasting season 2024/2025 - Dry white wines Grüner Veltliner

Tasting season 2024/2025 - Dry white wines Other less aromatic varieties

Tasting season 2024/2025 - Dry white wines Other rather aromatic varieties

Tasting season 2024/2025 - Dry white wines Cuvées

 
 
Tasting season 2024/2025 Dry red wines

Tasting season 2024/2025 - Dry red wines Pinot Noir

Tasting season 2024/2025 - Dry red wines Blaufränkisch/Lemberger

Tasting season 2024/2025 - Dry red wines Sangiovese

Tasting season 2024/2025 - Dry red wines Bordeaux varieties (including cuvées)

Tasting season 2024/2025 - Dry red wines Other varieties

Tasting season 2024/2025 - Dry red wines Red cuvées

 
 
Tasting season 2024/2025 Rosé

Tasting season 2024/2025 - Rosé Rosé

 
 
Tasting season 2024/2025 Sparkling wines

Tasting season 2024/2025 - Sparkling wines Champagne

Tasting season 2024/2025 - Spark ling wines Sparkling wines from other regions

 
 
Tasting season 2024/2025 Wines with residual sweetness

Tasting season 2024/2025 - Wines with residual sweetness Semi-dry/fine sweet wines up to 20g Rz/litre

Tasting season 2024/2025 - Wines with residual sweetness Off-dry/sweet wines up to 40g RZ/litre

Tasting season 2024/2025 - Wines with residual sweetness Kabinett from 40g RZ/l