Restaurant Wines

We generally only dine out when we travel. The times we do we eat out close to home at a “local” spot, we frequently just choose familiar and affordable wines. But any wine accompanying a restaurant meal takes on different complexity, tastes, and meaning – the atmosphere, the quality of the food, etc. all play a factor. Thus, we caution that our reviews of restaurant wines might be colored by the dining experience itself. If we try a new wine in a restaurant we might try to find it at retail. If so, we would “re-review” the wine without the restaurant-atmosphere bias (and add notes to our original post). But in general, we don’t choose restaurant wines that we see at retail – that’s the point of trying something different in a restaurant. We also gravitate toward less-popular (at least in the U.S.) selections in restaurants – such as Marsanne/Roussanne, Corbieres, or Muscadet – which are generally otherwise only found in specialty wine shops. Look for our Restaurant Wines icon on reviews of wines we’ve had in restaurants.