Scoop the Spectator and Win $75

This contest is sponsored by CSN Stores who sells everything from dining room chairs to wine aerators and Henckels Santuko knives.  The winner gets a $75 gift certificate that can be used in any of their online stores.

This is a great time of year for wine enthusiasts.  The holidays are coming so we'll have opportunities to crack open those special bottle with friends and family.  It's a chance to take stock of the year that was and think about which wines delivered the most excitement. 

Wine Spectator's Wine of the Year isn't necessarily the "best" wine they found in the past year.  That would be too easy to identify - we'd just look up the wines they rated the past year, sort on rating, and flip a coin as to which 100 pointer should win.  Rather, my view of the list is it's a list of wines that in their view defined the current state of the wine market.

Judging from past results, the wines selected are higher production, rated 95 pointers or better, are a good value, and somehow represent a statement the publication likes to make about a specific wine region or category.  Their stated criteria:

Each year, Wine Spectator editors survey the wines reviewed over the previous 12 months and select our Top 100, based on quality, value, availability and excitement.

I think it's fun to think about which wine will win.  Not so much because it's a wine you must have but rather because it's interesting to see how the market moves in response to the award being announced.  Consider last year's winner the 2005 Columbia Crest Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon.  Its release price was $27 and now sells at auction for $100.  In short, if you can scoop the Spectator there's an opportunity to be had flipping wine!  Well, unless you live in Massachusetts which is the only state in the union that you can't ship wine out of.

I won't steal anyone's thunder by sharing my guesses - though there's been some chatter about this subject on Twitter.  I hope we get a lot of entries because the prize is good -and- we'll wind up with some great QPR plays from the list of guesses.

Rules:

1. Leave your entry as a comment below.
2. One guess per person.
3. The first person to guess a specific wine "owns" that wine as their entry.  Subsequent guesses of the same wine aren't useful so look at the previous comments before submitting your entry.
4. If nobody guesses the 2010 Wine Spectator Wine of Year, the guess with the highest position on the list will win the gift certificate.
5. Not that they'd try, but Wine Spectator editors aren't allowed to enter.  And if you have inside information please don't spoil the fun for others by entering.  But if you do know please E-mail me and let me know. ;)
6. Contest closes Sunday November 14th at 11:59pm because Wine Spectator starts revealing the Top 10 Monday November 15th.

Good luck!

Bonus: WineSpectator.com is opening up for free access to their articles and ratings November 15-28 so if you're not a subscriber this is a good chance to see whether you'd find an online subscription useful.

Stacy Keibler Summer Altice Summer Glau Sunny Mabrey Susan Ward