The World's Best Wine Lists, From Restaurants to Airlines

Wine has become more important than ever to the world’s eaters, whether in South Africa, China, Peru, or the U.S. That’s my take-away from the 2016 World’s Best Wine List awards, which were released Thursday.

This is the third year for British publication World of Fine Wine’s annual restaurant wine list awards, which drew more than 4,500 entries from around the globe in 2016. Full disclosure: I was one of the seven senior judges who gave 817 of them one, two, or three stars. Guided by expertise rather than an official checklist, each judge picked his or her top three in each category, ranking them 1, 2, or 3 (the best). The numbers were tallied, and the lists with the most points won. The informal criteria that guided our assessments included diversity, quality of the wines, depth of vintages, and an individual stamp that marked the list as original and different in some way.