Welcome to our end of the year retrospective, review, and wrap for The Wine Pair Podcast! In this episode we review our highest and lowest rated wines of the year. Believe it or not, in 2023 we tasted and reviewed about 120 wines, and out of all of those wines, just a handful got ratings of 9 or 10, or got ratings of 4 or under.   If you are looking for a list of great wines to buy, or bad wines to avoid, this is the perfect episode for you! Some fun things we found as we reviewed these wines. First, Joe tends to grade a bit harder on the lower end of wines than Carmela does. Not a surprise there since Carmela is the nice one! Second, Carmela tends to rate white wines just a bit higher than Joe, and Joe tends to rate red wines just a bit higher than Carmela. Third, our top rated wines are a good mix of red, white, rosé, and sparkling, and also a good mix of wines from around the world. We have wines in the tip top of our ratings from France, Spain, Italy, and the United States. No matter what wine you like, we think you’ll find one represented in our “best of” review. And for our worst rated wines, well, they all happened to come from the state of California. Which is not a huge surprise because they make A LOT of wine in California, but also because we tend to find the style of California wine that makes it on the grocery store shelves lacking in subtlety and elegance. What we call “punch-you-in-the-face” wines.  Finally, we’ll tell you why we think our reviews are more useful and reliable than the 100 point professional ratings - and it’s mostly because we share with you when we like and don’t like a wine, and the pros do not! Join us for a super fun ride, and we would love to hear what your favorite and least favorite wines were this year, too! Contact The Wine Pair Podcast - we’d love to hear from you! Visit our website, leave a review, and reach out to us: https://thewinepairpodcast.com/ Follow and DM us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thewinepairpodcast/ Send us an email: [email protected]