Last year, the return to post-pandemic normalcy meant tantalizing new dining options sprouted seemingly everywhere, while existing restaurants reinvigorated themselves, and their wine lists benefitted from a push for diversity in styles and price points. Wine Spectator’s top dining articles of 2023 reflect our readers’ desire for the accessible and the exciting, from a list of supermarket wines that satisfy even top sommeliers to breathtaking wine destinations across the globe to steak houses that are moving beyond pairing porterhouses with Cabernet. Click on each headline below for the full stories, and sign up for our Private Guide to Dining newsletter for the latest wine and dining news in 2024!
Italian dining has diversified in recent years, moving past spaghetti and meatballs to refined restaurants celebrating regional cooking, with wine to match. Our editors singled out five metropolitan areas—New York City, south Florida, Chicago, Las Vegas and Southern California—with collections of Wine Spectator Restaurant Award winners that excel with their Italian-focused wine programs. They found stellar lists to suit old-school red-sauce joints and traditional Piedmont fare, coastal cuisine and southern Italian countryside specialties, and the taste of Sicily coming ashore in Santa Barbara. Buon appetito!
From the Sept. 30 issue
Sometimes nothing’s better than having your feet in the sand and a glass of wine at hand. This summer, Wine Spectator asked 12 beach-loving wine pros which bottles and cans they’d stash in a cooler to sip on while stretched out in a folding chair or on a beach blanket. Their picks included bottles of off-dry Riesling, buckets of bubbly and darker hues of rosé. Dive in!
Posted Aug. 4
New York City is a breeding ground for ambitious, discerning wine professionals who keep on top of the latest wine trends. So if you’re looking for something new to try, finding out what Big Apple somms are obsessed with right now is sure to set you on an intriguing path. (Hello, whole-cluster sparkling Concord in a can.) See what’s hot!
Posted Nov. 29
Time for an etiquette lesson. Yes, restaurant workers are there to make a meal special, but guests can lend a hand to make it a memorable one. Wine Specator asked 10 Restaurant Award-winning sommeliers about the kind of diners that keep them enjoying their jobs and the strategies you should follow when navigating the wine list with a sommelier. Get their tips for a truly pleasurable evening out!
Posted June 26
The chophouse is quintessentially American, but what’s even more classic is the pairing of red meat and wine. Today, many steak houses are capitalizing on that combination and enhancing their dining experiences with local ingredients, a wider variety of meats and unique selections of both Old World and New World wines that go beyond the staples of Bordeaux and California Cabernet. We carved out a list of 12 steak houses from around the U.S. whose wine selections are as prime as their porterhouses. What’s sizzling?
Posted Nov. 8
In a city as populous and diverse as New York, it’s only fitting there’s a dining scene to match. The city boasts innumerable top-notch restaurants, including more than 180 Wine Spectator Restaurant Award winners, more than any other city in the world. But with this magnitude and breadth of options, visitors and locals are faced with a challenge: Where to begin? These Grand Award winners offer 1,300 wine selections or more and feature serious breadth of top producers, outstanding depth in mature vintages, large-format bottles and superior organization, presentation and service—destinations for any enophile. Explore the Big Apple!
Posted Sept. 23
In our book, any event that gets people together outside to enjoy great food also needs a few bottles of wine to keep the party rolling. Why should a tailgate be any different? Wine Spectator asked nine sommeliers from across the United States which wine they’d pour into a red Solo cup, from Barolo to rosé crémant. Switch out the keg for a magnum!
Posted Sept. 1
Wine lovers know that dining and travel go hand in hand. There’s often no better way to take in a city’s culture than through its cuisine, and a particularly exquisite restaurant experience can elevate a fun jaunt to a lifelong memory. From a laboratory of gastronomic mad science tucked into a Danish football stadium, to a dining room fit for royalty in a 19th-century Viennese palace, these 12 Wine Spectator Restaurant Award–winning restaurants will stoke your wine wanderlust for their extraordinary settings, deep cellars stocked with rarities, championing of local producers and channeling of local flavors into imaginative courses. Get inspired!
Posted Sept. 1
In 2023, our Restaurant Awards program saw dining spots around the world recover from the pandemic and reinvest in well-curated, sophisticated wine programs. We toasted the promotions of 12 North American restaurants from Award of Excellence to Best of Award of Excellence, a huge jump for any establishment. From historic inns and hotels to an Old San Juan restaurant that has innovated with Puerto Rican food to a veritable shrine to caviar in Las Vegas, see who made the list!
Posted July 5
One of the world’s most celebrated wine regions, California’s Napa Valley is also home to a large number of great restaurants offering both excellent food and top-notch wine lists. These 19 restaurants go above and beyond by celebrating standout wineries, local and global alike, while offering unforgettable dining experiences amid sprawling vineyard vistas. Check them out!
Posted Aug. 31
Getting great gifts for anyone on your list can be tough, but tackling the enophile can be especially daunting: So many wine gadgets and gizmos just gather dust or are pure marketing hype without significant benefits. To help guide your shopping, Wine Spectator asked 14 top sommeliers across the United States and Canada which items they think actually make fabulous gifts. They came back with ideas that any wine lover would appreciate, from stunning decanters to practical wine bags to top-notch wine openers. Get some inspiration for 2024!
Posted Nov. 16
While restaurant openings abounded in 2023, we still had to say goodbye to some beloved establishments. Early in the year, chef Charlie Palmer announced the closure of his Grand Award-winning wine destination, Aureole Las Vegas at Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino—known for its iconic four-story tower of wine, where acrobatic “wine angels” soared on wires to grab customers’ orders from the restaurant’s 26,000 bottles of wine. Read on.
Posted Feb. 21
In 2023, U.S., dining and hospitality returned to full form, with exciting new restaurants opening all around the country, offering great food and terrific wine programs to match. To celebrate, we highlighted 10 debuts, all new to their communities and to Wine Spectator’s Restaurant Awards program. From a live-fire steak house in Texas to the first solo endeavor from an acclaimed French chef to a university-based restaurant getting straight As in wine, we got to know these new award winners.
Posted June 26
Shopping for wine at the grocery store may seem a little backward to enophiles used to carefully perusing racks of status wines and tiny-production bottlings at their favorite fine-wine shop. To demonstrate that you can find wine gems while also picking up breakfast cereal and frozen foods, Wine Spectator turned to sommeliers from 11 U.S. Grand Award winners. In other words, we asked the people least likely to be drinking supermarket wine which bottles they pick for convenience but love for their character. Their choices range from fresh Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc to juicy Rioja to even (yes) Champagne. Which wines did they put in their carts?
Posted May 2
Wine Spectator celebrated 3,505 restaurants in 2023 for their ambitious wine programs, with winners hailing from all 50 states and 75 countries and territories. We introduced 794 new winners who joined the dining spots at the top tier of wine excellence. Find your next dining spot—by location, award level, wine strengths, cuisine and pricing—in our free Restaurant Search and discover the best wine lists around the world!
Posted June 26