How to Submit Wines for Review
Wine Spectator reviews more than 16,000 wines each year. All new releases are reviewed in blind tastings in flights with their peers. (For more information, please refer to About Our Tastings.)
Our goal is to review wines that are important and available to our readers. In most cases, we review only wines that are distributed in major markets in the United States.
The task of managing these tastings occupies a staff of tasting coordinators based in Wine Spectator offices in New York and Napa. Each office is responsible for specific wine regions.
Most of the wines we review are specifically requested by our editors and supplied by producers or importers. In order to achieve our goals for coverage, Wine Spectator also spends thousands of dollars each year purchasing wines for review. In addition, we receive many unsolicited samples; unfortunately, due to logistical constraints, we cannot guarantee that these wines will be tasted or reviewed. Wines that are sent without the supplemental information we require will not be tasted.
If you produce or represent a wine you would like Wine Spectator to review, please contact the appropriate office for detailed information. Contacting us before you send samples will save effort and expense for all concerned.
For more general inquiries, here are answers to frequently asked questions about Wine Spectator’s tasting process.
How do I know which office to contact?
Wines from California, Washington, Oregon, Australia, New Zealand and South America are reviewed in our Napa office. You can reach the tasting coordinators at napatastings@mshanken.com or (707) 299-3999.
All other wines, including wines from France, Italy, Spain, Austria, Germany, South Africa, Portugal and Greece, are reviewed in the New York office. You can reach the coordinators at nytasting@mshanken.com or (212) 684-4224.
If samples are sent to an office in error, they will not be reviewed there and we cannot forward these samples to the correct office. Prior to sending samples to any office you should contact a tasting department staff member from the correct office for more information. Please do not send unsolicited samples.
How do I submit a wine?
Each submission consists of two bottles of wine and a completed Sample Information Form. Please contact the appropriate office to receive the form that corresponds to your wine type/region.
All samples must have U.S. Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB)-approved front and back labels on them. We will not accept wines with unfinished labels.
We require—in writing—the suggested retail bottle price and the number of cases produced (and, for wines produced outside the United States, the number of cases imported). This information is printed with each review.
Other information we request if pertinent:
- The official release date for the wine if the sample submission is in advance of the wine’s release
- The grape varieties used in a blend, if not listed on the label
- The percentage of residual sugar, if any, in the wine
We cannot return bottles submitted as tasting samples.
