You can get a site directory by clicking on the “hamburger” icon () in the upper right of this page.
Or you can search this site with Google (standard Google-search rules apply).
(Be aware that “sponsored” links to other sites will appear atop the actual results.)
This is not a place where one or a very few persons deliver their individual opinions about particular wines. Rather, it is a place where those interested in finding and enjoying interesting and satisfying wines can be saved the tedium of extensively combing the internet for such discussions and evaluations, because we have done that for you. There are almost literally countless web pages with some discussion of this or that wine type, or—more commonly—just some one specimen of a type; many such pages are very useful so far as they go, but interested readers soon realize that they will have to look at an awful lot of such pages to get a broad perspective on that wine type, and to get past possibly idiosyncratic individual opinions.
The pages of this site are listed in a drop-down menu that you can see by clicking on the yellow “hamburger” icon in the upper right of this and every page of this site. (Such icons are called “hamburger” icons because the three horizontal bars resemble a hamburger seen side on .) The menu display is divided into five colored “zones” that each cluster related pages.
In those listings you will find quite a few pages of discussions of matters pertaining to wine (Generalities in the blue zone and Specifics in the green zone). But the core here is the set of pages on individual wine varieties, listed in appropriately colored zones for Red, White, and “Other” wine types. Or, of course, you can click the “Click here to search this site” in the top left area of any page here and enter the name of the particular wine for which you want information.
Each such individual wine-type page has some brief background on its grape (where it originated, what general sort of wine it makes, and so on), then quotations from several reasonably authoritative sources on the general nature and quality of the wines that grape makes. After that, though, comes the vital part: a list of all reasonably available wines of that type priced at $20 or under and rated by a consensus of professional wine critics at 89 or more points. Those consensus ratings are assembled by the fine folks at Wine Searcher, an excellent resource for anyone at all interested in wine. We have more to say about those lists just a little farther down this page.
For some wine types (say, for example, Cabernet Sauvignon or Chardonnay), practically every non-teetotaller in the western world will have some idea what the type tastes like; but even there, if you have not delved deep, you may have missed some reasonably priced specimens of good quality, and perhaps we can help with those. But we also want to help you explore other wine types you may not yet have sampled.
“[N]early 80 percent of the world’s wine is made from just 20 kinds of grapes. Many of the rest face extinction.”
One of the great issues in the modern world of wine is the concentration on but a small handful of the very well known “international” grape varieties, putting the future of literally hundreds (and perhaps thousands) of wonderful and distinctive grape types—and their wines—at serious risk. For all that many of us like to think of wine-making as an art, the reality is that it’s a business, even for the small, sometimes literally mom’n’pop wineries. A winery that is making an absolutely wonderful, world-class wine is at risk of bankruptcy if no one wants to buy that wine because they haven’t seen it reviewed in the small handful of places casual wine drinkers go to for advice (and that many retailers won’t stock for the same reasons, further aggravating that vicious cycle). Consider that two-thirds of the world’s wine-growing acreage is dedicated to a mere three dozen grape varieties out of the thousands available to make wine with and you begin to see the problem. (In fact, fully one-third of the world’s wine-grape acreage is devoted to a mere dozen or so varieties.)
Here, trying to live up to our name Useful, we have not tried to list every decent-or-better wine grape in the world, because so many of their wines are simply not available in the U.S. We have, however, tried to list as many less-familiar types of good wines reasonably available here at reasonable prices as we could. If, in looking at the drop-down lists of wines atop any page here you see names you know little or nothing about, don’t just pass them by: take a look, and perhaps find some new favorites.
We assembled those lists by tedious, time-consuming research; really, the sort of thing you would probably do yourself if you wanted to find out about, say, Assyrtiko wines. We basically save you that tedium and time. Most wine types are common enough that Wine Searcher lists 500 bottlings for each; we scanned all those, one grape type at a time, culling first by critic ratings, then further by price. Our price criterion was that for 89-point bottlings, Wine Searcher show at least five offerings, and for 90-point of higher at least three. We saw no point in listing wines not likely to be generally available to the average consumer.
(In a few cases, where a particular grape has but scarce bottlings to be found—at least in the U.S.—we have fallen back on 88-point bottlings, so as to have something to suggest.)
As we mentioned above, the ratings are assembled by Wine Searcher from a select panel of respected critics. Do, though, be wary of bottlings rated by only one or two critics (Wine Searcher shows, on its pages for particular bottlings, the critics’ score and how many critics have rated it). You might want to check our page here on On Published Wine Reviews for more insight into wine criticism.
The lists in the drop-down menu are not by any means every wine grape we could discover (there are an estimated 1,368 types in reasonably regular commercial production around the world); our list is only the ones that by general expert consensus are at least capable of making high-quality wines, which nonetheless totals something over two hundred—but that list is shortened by the added criteria of reasonable price and reasonable availability, which brings it down to just about two hundred even. Incidentally, 1,368 is the number commercially vinified; the actual number of Vitis vinifera ssp vinifera (to be formal) varieties was reliably estimated in 2017 at about six thousand.
Our guiding principle in examining wine reviews, tastings, and discussions has been to identify good wines that someone who makes wine a regular part of their life can plausibly afford. While it is pleasant to occasionally open a $40 or $50 bottle of wine, few indeed of us can afford to do so several times a week, week in and week out. That is why we have restricted our focus here to wines available at retail for “a reasonable price”, which we arbitrarily define as no more than $20, with many quite a bit less. (But that dollar line is getting harder and harder to hold as the years go by.)
(An interesting article, aptly entitled “Who Buys Wine Over $20?” appeared in Wine Searcher’s “Wine News” for February 6, 2014.)
But even if a given wine is of good quality and available somewhere at a reasonable price, that is of little avail if that “somewhere” is just one or maybe two retailers, especially if small or far from you. We thus also tried to limit our lists to wines available at a plausible number of retailers.
Please understand that we are not claiming that we have listed all good wines of a given type available for under $20; for some popular wine types, there might be hundreds or even thousands. What we do believe is that we have presented for each type a menu of bottlings each of which is widely considered among the best of its type at that price point, and which in sum are generally held to be a satisfactory representations of their particular grapes.
When you come to look at the individual pages, you will find the lists headed as “Some to Try”, not “Buy These” or anything of that sort. We expect, and recommend, that you do some further homework on any listed wines in which you are interested. If that seems to contradict what we have said about why this site exists, it really doesn’t. We have pointed you at a select set, and that in itself is the huge saving in time and tedium. Each listed wine has a click-on link to retail offerings as shown in Wine Searcher.
(We formerly also tried to include direct links for each bottling to a page on Cellar Tracker, another terrific resource for wine fanciers, showing opinions and ratings from amateur but veteran wine buffs. The problem is that unlike Wine Searcher, which has a powerful database that can find a wine from almost any reasonable fragment of its name, Cellar Tracker relies on its members to enter the name of the bottling; and, as you might expect, that has led to particular wines being listed on several different pages under variations of their full name. Moreover, even for wines with only a single page, finding the name used for that wine is not always easy. With almost a thousand different bottlings listed here, it is just impractible for us to try to find the actual Cellar Tracker page for each. Instead, we have provided links to a Google search for each bottling on the Cellar Tracker site; Google usually picks up the correct pages.)
Furthermore, finding and buying wines usually involves a lot more than just assembling a list of interesting wines: there are all sorts of practical issues needing consideration, notably (for those many not likely to be locally available) shipping costs. For a fuller discussion of wine-search sites and of buying considerations in general, please visit our page on Buying Wine and don’t miss the page that discusses wine reviews and their limitations.
If you are a first-time visitor here, we suggest that before jumping into the individual-grape pages, you look in on our pages of Generalities, as linked in the blue zone of the “hamburger” drop-down menu linked at the upper right corner of every page here. Even if you are a veteran wine drinker, you just might find something of interest there; and for those just starting out on their voyage into the world of wine, we hope it will be quite helpful. And, again, don’t overlook the discussion of the practicalities of buying wine.
Let us also note here that attached to this site is a Wine Bookshop wherein you can browse among—and, if you so please, buy new or used copies of— over 100,000 books related to wine. (You will find a Bookshop link in the green “Specifics” drop-down menu near the top of every site page.) The page includes our recommendations for a particular few wine-related classics.
One other thing: if, after exploring this site, you feel that it justifies its title “Useful”, we would deeply appreciate it if you would post links to it on whatever places on the internet that you post anything. The link is simply https://thatusefulwinesite.com/ Our thanks to you for considering it.
If you have found that this site lives up to its name, “useful”, we would be grateful if you would post a link to it wherever you post on the internet—social media, websites, whatever—and also mention it to any wine-loving friends or co-workers. But, in any event, thanks for visiting!
) in the upper right of this page.