I Looked at 1,000 Wine Lists. The Data Says the State of Fine Wine is Boring and Overpriced.
I studied the numbers from 1,063 Michelin-starred wine lists. I thought I'd uncover hidden gems, but that’s not what I found.
Exciting news! Jason Wilson invited me to write a monthly column for his very trendy Everyday Drinking, where I’ll be looking at wine through a more analytical lens — that’s to say, taking some of the emotion out of wine.
Then, if that wasn’t exciting enough, I finally get to publish the result of five months of work with start-up WineLabs and its founder, Ilias Miraoui: what is probably the largest analysis ever conducted of wine lists from 1,063 Michelin-starred restaurants worldwide.
Read what I found out.
“All you have to do is write one true sentence,” Ernest Hemingway would say to himself, to combat his writer’s block.
“Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.”
Can that be applied to data?
It’s worth trying, as I’ve been stuck on this analysis for what feels like forever.
For the past six months, I’ve worked with a start-up, WineLabs, and its founder, Ilias Miraoui, to build what is the largest analysis of wine lists from Michelin-starred restaurants worldwide. The idea was simple: if these are the best restaurants, with the best sommeliers and the deepest cellars, what do they actually serve? My hypothesis was that we would uncover niche wine markets—hidden gems known only to insiders. But that’s not what we found.
The truest sentence I know is this:
After six months of cleaning data, Ilias and I found that Krug and Dom Pérignon appear on 42% of all Michelin wine lists.
Among the most represented producers, beyond these two Champagne houses, the pattern is equally conventional: Château d'Yquem, Gaja, Bollinger, Louis Roederer, Sassicaia, Château Margaux, Ruinart, Domaine Leflaive, Château Mouton Rothschild, Vega Sicilia, Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, and Château Haut-Brion.
Hopefully, that is not where the story ends, but it is where it starts. It starts with a question: are wine choices at the top end of the market homogeneous— homogeneous to the point of being boring?
The data suggests they are.
Continue reading on Everyday Drinking…
Appreciate your perspective and all the data in this piece - particularly this passage: “The result is carefully constructed, technically excellent—and increasingly forgettable—wine experiences. In a category built on terroir, the disappearance of place at the point of consumption is a striking contradiction.” There are such powerfully charming stories we can tell in this space; it is a loss for the consumer not to experience them in (very elevated) hospitality.