When you go out to dinner, even if you have a favorite wine, sometimes it’s fun to ask your waiter about the restaurant’s most popular wines. You know what you like, but it’s also nice to change things up and possibly learn from what other people prefer.
Well, we’ve got the mother of all lists when it comes to top-selling restaurant wines. Wine & Spirits magazine has released its 25th anniversary restaurant poll, an issue they have published since 1989.
Wine directors at restaurants across the country were asked to share their top 10 best-selling wines in the final quarter of 2013. Once the magazine’s editors had these stats in-hand, they were able to compare numbers and whittle everything down to a list of the top 50 best-selling wines nationwide.
50 is a whole lot of wines, so let’s take a look at the top 10 best-selling wines from this past year:
1) Cakebread Cellars, average price: $86.48
2) Jordan Vineyard & Winery, average price: $101.57
3) Duckhorn Vineyards, average price: $90.29
4) Sonoma-Cutrer, average price: $49.20
5) Silver Oak Wine Cellars, average price: $134.93
6) Frank Family, average price: $80.79
7) La Crema, average price: $48.67
8) Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars, average price: $94.00
9) Decoy, average price: $60.00
10) Franciscan Oakville Estate, average price: $67.10
It’s pretty impressive to see a nearly $90 bottle of wine top this list. It shows that quality may be more important to wine drinkers than spending less money. Perhaps it’s simply about value; they feel $90 is a reasonable amount to pay for a solid, enjoyable wine.