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Welcome to That Useful Wine Site!
You have apparently come to this page from a link on a search engine or another site. If this is your first visit here, I much recommend that you take a few minutes to look over the introductory material accessible via the blue “Introductory” zone of the Site Menu available from the “hamburger” icon in the upper right of this (and every) page. An understanding of the purposes and principles of organization of this site will, I hope and believe, much augment your experience here, for this page and in general. You can simply click this link to get at the site front page, which, unsurprisingly, is the best place to start. Thank you for visiting.
The internet is awash with sites related to wine, and a good number of them are excellent. This is not a comprehensive list of such sites; the assembling of such a list would be a monumental task, and fraught with difficulties of judgement.
Rather, this is a short set of pointers to sites we have found ourselves turning to fairly often as we plowed through making this one. We think each is of value and interest, and hope you also find them so. (The lists are in no special order.)
Resources
CellarTracker “The world’s largest collection of wine reviews, tasting notes and personal stories from people who love wine.”
You can read the reviews for free. You can also join and be able to leave reviews and even use their cellar-management tools; joining is free, but they request a contribution (fair enough if you use their software tools.)
Wine Searcher “Find and price wines, beers and spirits across all online stores.”
While you can access it for free, to see all retail offers and other extras (such as reviews from Jancis Robinson) there is an annual fee, currently $65 US. That’s $1.25 a week, and we heartily recommend it if you have any real interest in wine.
1000 Corks “Buy and search wine, beer, and spirits. Get the best price everytime.”
Listings of retail offers for wines (and other alcoholic beverages). No fee. Not as diverse a site as Wine Searcher, but their listings, while naturally they overlap, are not identical, so it’s worth checking both.
ThirtyFifty “The pronunciation guide below is for grapes and regions of the world, enjoy.”
As it says: a pronunciation guide for many wines and wine regions; quite helpful.
Regional wine websites “A collection of the web’s most useful sites about specific wine regions”
A “portal page” on Jancis Robinson’s web site.
Do Bianchi “A humanist perspective into the world of Italian wine and food.”
The site includes an Italian-English wine glossary and the Italian Grape Name and Appellation Pronunciation Project, whereby you can hear selected Italian wine names properly pronounced.
The Century Club “The club for adventurous wine drinkers who’ve tried 100 grape varieties or more.”
Membership is free (and on the honor system)—and you get a frameable certificate!
Free the Grapes! An organization dedicated to the stupendously frustrating task of trying to get state legislatots around the country to put some small grain of sanity into their wine-purchasing laws.
Jancis Robinson The site of arguably the world’s most important wine critic. Some parts are free, some (the “Purple Pages”) require a fee-based sign-up.
Ian D’Agata The web site of arguably the world’s greatest expert on Italian grapes and wines and strong advocate for native grape varieties.
The Wine Anorak Jamie Goode’s site; we found it showing up a lot when filtering down wine comments to the more useful ones. (In the U.K., “anorak”—actually a hooded parka—signifies about the same as “geek” in the U.S.)
Cheap Wine Ratings The site name says it all: wines, almost all under $20, reviewed.
No Longer Active, But Worth Visiting
The Prince of Pinot A long-running series of expert reviews of Burgundy-style wines (Pinot Noir and Chardonnay). Quite useful. (No new posts since 2022.)
The Monnow Voice articles The proprietor of a boutique wine shop in England wrote a most excellent series of wine-related essays for a local newspaper; highly recommended. [archived]
Odd Bacchus “Dedicated to drinking the unusual and the obscure.” More toward the obscure than the unusual, but fascinating. (No new posts since 2019.)
"The Tangled Economics Of American Wine" An edited excerpt from American Wine Economics by James Thornton; a truly fascinating read on “irrational” (in economic terms) wine consumers.
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!
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