The first time you walk into a wine store, or even into the wine department of a good grocery store, and stand before the bottle-laden shelves, you may well feel intimidated by the sheer number of choices available to you. You can help cut your options down to a manageable number if you read wine reviews by reputable writers.
Wine Specialists
The Wine Advocate, the brainchild of wine aficionado Robert Parker, and the Wine Spectator are two of the most revered publications devoted to reviewing and rating wines from all around the world. The bi-monthly Wine Advocate has more than 50,000 subscribers, while the Wine Spectator, published 15 times a year, reaches more than 2.6 million readers each year.
Wine reviews are the bread and butter of both these publications, and both regularly produce rankings of reasonably priced wines, as well as more expensive vintages. You can buy both at good newsstands, or by subscription. The Wine Spectator's website also post some reviews for public perusal, but to access most of the material on the site, you'll have to subscribe.
Magazines Specializing in Both Food and Wine
Food and Wine and Bon Appetit both are cooking magazines that devote considerable space to wine and wine reviews. Since the primary emphasis of these publications is on cooking, the wine reviews tend to concentrate on pair food and wine. They also generally include prices for the wines they review, and from time to time publish round-up stories about inexpensive, but highly drinkable, wines.
Lifestyle Magazines
One example of this sort of magazine is Sunset, which bills itself as the publication of "live in the West." It features a regular column devoted to wine, but it also publishes more ambitious articles about wineries and wines from the western United States. The emphasis tends to be on affordable wines and the foods that they complement.
Newspapers
Several newspapers, particularly those published in big cities or in wine-growing regions, employ writers who deal only with wine and regularly publish wine reviews. The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and the Oregonian (published in Portland, Oregon) each devote considerable space to the subject, and you can find many of the articles on their web sites.
Tags: wine reviews, Wine Spectator, considerable space, devote considerable, devote considerable space, Food Wine