Crafting a Wine Spectator Award of Excellence Wine List
A cornerstone of any Hospitality leader is the skill to create a functional wine program. In my experience, a functional list adds excitement, culture, credibility, and profitability to the restaurant enterprise. For our guests, it adds flavor, theatre, and satisfaction to the dining experience. In short, by making the guests part of the wine stories in your dining room, you will see those guests return again and again. For this article, we will focus on the 2024 Wine Spectator Award of Excellence, whose due date for entry is March 15, 2024.
Why should you listen to me? Maybe because I’ve won ten of these awards over the last ten years. With 2024, I’ll add two more. But that’s not really what I can help you learn. I suggest you approach your wine program (notice I’m not using ‘List’) just like you would write a food story. A Wine List should be interesting and engaging and offer challenge and diversity of flavor and texture. It should hold some surprises. It should give some comfort to the timid. Ego to the ego-driven and flair to your more gregarious guests. It should come alive in your guest's hands to stimulate their storytelling, their admission to quirky flavor appetites, and demonstrate one of the last remaining restaurant theatre tools in Hospitality.
There are two general ways to develop a wine program: The usual boring way. Or the way that is fraught with argument, creative tension, personal interaction with the wine industry, and a ton of personal discovery.
The ‘normal way’ is to call your wine distributor(s). I hope you have more than one, and tell them you want a list of their best stuff. They will show up with a list driven by scan data, grocery shelf placements, sales numbers, and a batch of suggested wine from the big corporate kids of the industry. The list can be at least okay in its performance, but it will feel like vanilla toast. Compare this list with the wild and crazy choices, constructions, and trends in the craft beer, non-alcoholic, and seltzer categories, and wimpy vanilla toast is indeed what it will taste like. Most importantly, your guest will be bored. Bored enough not to order anything. You will be bored because the wines have corporate-speak stories that resonate only with the marketing people who created them.
Yes, I have a bias here. I know too many world-class, interesting wine people to accept a boring list. But your list is your list. So you can begin to create your own, let me illustrate what goes into my recipe for a wine program worthy of your and your guest's undivided attention.
Let’s define the Wine Spectator Award of Excellence winning list:
Award of Excellence
2,001 winners
These wine lists, which should offer at least 90 selections, feature a well-chosen assortment of quality producers, along with a thematic match to the menu in both price and style. Whether compact or extensive, focused or diverse, these lists deliver sufficient choice to satisfy discerning wine lovers. (From the Wine Spectator Award of Excellence FAQ)
In addition:
You need to have a workable inventory (12–2 bottles) of all the wines
You should be able to describe the staff training and education supporting the program.
Show that the wine is organized, cared for in terms of temperature and light exposure, and presented well to the guest.
First-Setting the Stage
The context of your restaurant, no matter how humble, gives you a story framework to fill. Ethnic backgrounds, name associations, local quirky foods, neighborhood legends, and whatever visionary aspiration is built into your operation can be used as the stage.
Second-Build your Network
Do this every way you can. The digital age allows you to connect with wine people, suppliers, vineyards, and like-minded Hospitality folk like never before. One person, including you, will not write your best list. Leverage success stories, access local wines (no matter their quality level), and pick the brains of wine store owners far and wide to brief out the scale and breadth of your program.
Make friends with your wine distributor salespeople and their managers. If your distributors are not your allies, the list, your guests, and you will suffer.
Third- Write a Mission Statement
Huh? I’ve found that my most successful, profitable, and attractive lists had a job to do in the financial and artistic life of the restaurant. Generally, I seek to pay all my hourly labor costs with the revenue dollars from my wine program. Your restaurant will have its own missions to fulfill. Find them, commit to them, and write the list to succeed in this mission.
Taste every wine, take notes, then use them.
You and your staff should taste every wine. You have to be able to look your guests in the eye and tell them why the wine is on the list. You don’t have to like the wine yourself. But you must be able to tell its story and why it earned its place on the list. Yes, this takes time. Ask to be sampled on the wine candidates, attend every distributor-sponsored tasting you can, and be willing to share a sample bottle with other accounts.
Presentation
Present the program in an easy-to-read, navigate, and select-from format. I have a bias for the Tabloid size two-sided list. Available in my Profile tab is my 2023 List from Lake McDonald Lodge. I feel it’s perfect for the Award of Excellence size program and gives you ample room for graphics, story-telling, and, in my case, sustainability certificate logos. Your list is a vast communication and propaganda tool for the restaurant. Mine are heavy paper; I gladly send them away with guests regularly.
Why do this?
The Wine Spectator materials list a host of financial, digital exposure, and industry status reasons to compete for and win the awards. For our programs, the impact has been a 30k to 60k increase in dollars sold over our 110-day season. My product cost hovers in the high 30% mark. But the most vital impact is on my staff's professional performance and behavior. I insist that this is their award. They arrive at work and walk past the set of Award of Excellence certificates. Every day is a new opportunity to tell the wine stories, learn the stories of the guests, and add each staffer's stories to the dining room's legacy. It’s not just about the wine.
