Want to Find the Best Restaurant Wine Lists in the World? This App Can Help

Yelp will give you a review for a restaurant’s food, but few patrons are rating the dining experience solely on wine. For serious aficionados, though, a good wine list is a must. So, Wine Spectator, the oenophile’s magazine, created an app that will take you to the best wines the restaurant world has to offer.

The Wine Spectator Restaurant Awards iOS app is a database of all the places that have won the magazine’s annual excellence awards over the years. Sure, it’s a big advertisement for the magazine itself, but it’s also an easy way to dip into the publication’s offerings without shelling out for a subscription. You can search 3500 award-winning restaurant listings, covering 50 states and more than 70 countries.

Wine Spectator Restaurant Awards via the App Store

For every restaurant, the app will tell you where their list’s strengths lie—whether they’re a great Champagne bar or have a better selection of Californian wines—how much they have in their inventory, who their sommelier is, and, importantly for those just dipping a toe in the grape-hued world of wine, how expensive it is for both food and drink. You can also see how long the restaurant has been on Wine Spectator's list.

If you’re the type of person who’s content with a $4 bottle from Trader Joe’s, you probably have no interest in who the wine director is at a particular restaurant, much less how many thousands of bottles they have in their inventory. But if you are looking to explore the world of fine wines, this app can help you figure out where to go so when you do want to go to a restaurant with five on-staff sommeliers, at least you’ll be going someplace where you’ll get your money’s worth.

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