Michel Bettane

BWW2024: Michel Bettane - Best French Wine Critic of the World

All of the tasting notes of the wine critic mentioned above in tastingbook, comes from press releases from wine importers and vineyards, or directly from the critic and can also be found on the critic’s own website, which can be easily accessed by clicking on the link above.

The Absurdity and Flattery of Scores

I am a wine critic. And so, of course, I am called on to judge the quality of thousands of different wines every year. Not just to describe them or to give an opinion on their quality but also to score them and rank them in a league table. And that’s where the trouble starts.

It doesn't take a genius to appreciate the absurdity of giving a number score to a work of art or, worse still, an artist....

Did Someone Say “Classification”?

Wine buffs just love official wine classifications, especially French ones. So do the producers-among the top Médoc and Burgundy growths, anyway. It is easy to see why: Classifications push up the prices of their wines and land. But the whole thing takes on a nightmare quality as recent classifications come up for review. The squabbling over the Médoc crus bourgeois has exhausted the patience of even the be...

Michel Bettane is a leading French wine critic, and for twenty years, a writer for the French consumer wine publication La Revue du vin de France. He left La Revue in 2004 to work for the rivaling wine publication Le Classement des Meilleurs Vins de France.[2] He now runs his own website.

Following the acquisition of La Revue du vin de France by Marie-Claire and media group Lagardère, Bettane and his colleague Thierry Desseauve left the pub...