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Top 100 wines by year

Every year James Halliday selects his Top 100 wines from the many thousands of wines he sampled over the course of that year. Featuring wines of all varieties and at a range of prices, it's an invaluable guide to the very best of Australian wine each year. Also incorporated into the Top 100 is an overview of the year in wine, looking at the major trends and the key issues facing grape growers and wine makers. The Top 100 is first published in The Australian newspaper in November and is uploaded onto winecompanion.com.au shortly after. Here are all of James' Top 100 wines, dating back to 2001.

• Top 100 wines of 2011

  

  I know I’m not going to get much sympathy when I say this year’s selection for the Top 100 was a marathon effort, with a record 1887 wines entered. The 7am to 7pm tasting day went on relentlessly and seemingly endlessly, with a short lunch break and one or two hours between 3pm and 5pm to deal with the mountain of emails and other writing deadlines. I have christened my desk the Bermuda Triangle, where all sorts of letters, email print outs, and other important pieces of paper mysteriously disappear.

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• Top 100 wines of 2010

  
  Welcome to the 2010 edition of my Top 100 wine guide. And before I go any further, the mathematicians among you are correct: there are 110. The early warning sign of trouble ahead was the 1842 entries from the 599 pre-qualified wineries, 190 more wines than last year’s record of 1652 wines...

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• Top 100 wines of 2009

  
  This year saw record number of entries, 1652 compared with the highest prior number of 1258 (in 2004). This partly reflected an increase in the number of prequalified wineries invited to submit samples, although, as always, some elect not to (or forget to) participate.

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• Top 100 wines of 2008

  
  The Australian wine industry continues to face a formidable array of challenges and uncertainties, some man-made, some the forces of nature, some within the power of winemakers to meet, some outside their control. Shortly put, they include the lengthening and severe drought (which may include an element of permanent climate change, but how much is anyone's guess)...

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• Top 100 wines of 2007

  
  From feast to famine, from surplus to shortage: what a difference a year makes. Everywhere we turn, there are prophecies of doom driven by the ongoing drought, and the consequent parlous state of the Murray Darling water system. And they are prophecies which have to be taken very seriously.

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• Top 100 wines of 2006

  
  Another year, another 10,000 or so wines, and another Top 100. It all sounds much the same, and in one sense it is, but the grape and wine glut has been capturing plenty of headlines. For winemakers it has not been a comfortable year; for some grapegrowers it has been disastrous. But then so is the prolonged drought for farmers and graziers in significant parts of Queensland and New South Wales, with a likely El Nino pointing to another hot, dry summer.

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• Top 100 wines of 2005

  
  If, on looking through the wines I have chosen for this year's Top 100, you think I have been unduly kind, just remember these have come from a total field of over 10,000 wines. The pre-qualified process I necessarily employ to avert up to half of these arriving at already stretched resources means that 1233 crossed the starting line.

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• Top 100 wines of 2004

  
  In my recently released 2005 Australian Wine Companion there were 377 new winery listings. The 2004 Companion had 240 new entries, the year before 180. It is a parabolic curve, and there is every indication it will continue through to next year at least. If an additional 400 wineries were to make their maiden appearance, it would mean 1200 have come into existence in the last four years, more than the total between 1840 and 2000.

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• Top 100 wines of 2003

  
  Discover James' top 100 Australian wines taken from The Australian in 2003

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• Top 100 wines of 2002

  
  Discover James' top 100 wines of 2002 taken from The Australian.

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• Top 100 wines of 2001

  
  Discover James' top 100 wines from way back in 2001. As published in The Australian.

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• Top 100 2000

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