Table Of Contents
Why You Should Trust VinePair
Throughout the year, VinePair conducts numerous tastings for our popular Buy This Booze column, sampling close to 10,000 bottles annually. The calendar for these tastings is finalized at the beginning of the year and open calls for each list are sent out on a month by month basis to producers, distributors, importers, and publicists. All tastings are conducted by the VinePair tastings department, led by VinePair’s tastings director, Keith Beavers, a wine professional and NYC hospitality veteran with 20+ years of experience; and managing editor, Tim McKirdy, who oversees spirits and has been with the team since 2018. Our mission for reviews and ratings is to provide a clear, reliable, and trustworthy source of information for consumers who care about the quality, price, and availability of the drinks they’re looking for.
While VinePair has investors and advertisers, they in no way dictate our content. The lists we curate are entirely editorial and based on the expertise of our tastings department. Content that has been paid for by an advertiser, or any content for which we have been compensated, will always be clearly labeled as sponsored content.
How We Taste
Tastings for review are not typically conducted blind. In alignment with our reviews mission, we believe in purposefully tasting all products as our readers typically would, with full knowledge of the producer, the region, and the price.
Tastings are conducted by the VinePair tastings department and select category experts and typically include multiple tasting sessions per category. (For the categories where we receive hundreds of submissions, this can take a while!) In addition to price, submissions are evaluated based on quality, which includes aroma, flavor, texture, and availability.
How We Curate Each List
During tasting, we assign a score to each product on a 100-point scale. Then we review all scores and compile an editorially driven list that meets our criteria for each specific category. It’s important to note that these are not necessarily the highest-scoring submissions we tasted this year. Instead, each list is meant to showcase the best bottles across every price and for every scenario — because while price is completely objective, “affordability” is not.
All wines, beers, and spirits must be currently available in the U.S. to be eligible for review, and our scores and reviews are in no way affected by any advertising, partnerships or other commercial relationships.
How to Be Considered For Open Calls
Sample requests will contain all relevant submission information and details about the article. Open calls are sent to every relevant party in our contact database. If you have not submitted your information to the database and wish to be kept informed of our tastings calendar, please do so now by completing this form.
If you choose to send your wine, beer, spirit or any other product to VinePair, we make no claim whatsoever to cover your product, positively or negatively, in writing, video or audio.
Submission Guidelines
Samples should be submitted no more than one month before the tasting takes place. Any samples received after the submission deadline will not be considered.
- All samples received will also be considered for review, as well as VinePair’s annual 50 Best Wines and 50 Best Spirits lists.
- Sample submissions must be accompanied by a completed Google Form entry for each of the bottles you are submitting. You will receive a relevant Google Form link for each tasting in the corresponding email open call. Failure to complete the Google Form may result in the sample not being considered.
- We kindly ask that two full bottles of each wine or beer sample be sent in case of a flawed bottle and for follow-up tastings. In the case of spirits, please send a full single bottle as samples are tasted more than once and by multiple staff members. Failure to comply with these requirements may result in the sample(s) not being considered.
- All samples should be sent to the following address unless directed otherwise in the email open call:
Product Reviews
VinePair
244 5th Ave, 11th Floor
New York, NY 10001
Questions
For questions regarding samples and reviews, please contact the Tastings Team at [email protected].
Ethics
- From time to time we work with various partners to highlight wine, beer, spirits and other products that we believe you, our readers, will be interested in learning about. When we do so, those pieces of content are clearly labeled as ‘PARTNER.’
- As of 2024, VinePair no longer participates in any affiliate programs. All links included in our content are as a convenience to our readers, not for earning commission — we receive no monetary value from them.
- To learn more about VinePair, please visit our About page.
