How to be listed by Star Wine List
Star Wine List is the guide to great wine bars and wine restaurants around the world.
Our international network of ambassadors is composed of sommeliers and wine experts in each region, whose job it is to keep their fingers on the pulse of emerging trends on their respective food and wine scenes, and to visit any venues that might be worthy of a listing. We also feature the full wine lists of as many venues as possible so that you can peruse the wine selections in anticipation of your visit, or decide which places are for you in the first place.
Here's how our listings work:
Red Star
A Red Star venue is one to which we would like to bring our own wine friends when they visit our city or region! They are all venues that our team has visited in person, and highly recommends.
Red Stars can be small wine bars, bistros, fine dining or hotel restaurants, and their wine lists can be big, small, classic or quirky – all styles are welcome so long as we think they are great places for wine lovers.
Red Star listings have full profile pages on Star Wine List’s website and app, with descriptions written by our team.
White Star
A White Star venue is one whose wine list we have seen and approved but have either not yet been able to visit, or feel that the standard of overall offering sits just below our signature Red Star recommendations. White Star venues are required to provide their wine list, either via their own website or by sending a copy directly to us for publication on Star Wine List.
A White Star listing is often the first step in a venue's Star Wine List journey, and we reserve the right to upgrade a venue to a Red Star once we have experienced it fully or, indeed, to downgrade a Red Star venue to a White Star if we believe that we can no longer recommend it as highly as before.
We continually evaluate and review our venues.
How to recommend a venue / apply to list your own
Anyone can recommend a venue to us, either having been impressed on a visit or because it's their own.
You are welcome to make your recommendation via this Google Form. If you cannot access Google Docs, please email us on info@starwinelist.com with the following information:
- Venue name
- City/region
- Country
- Your email address
- Your name
- Are you involved with the venue as an owner, employee or investor?
- Wine list attached in PDF format or as a link.
Unless we have already visited, all venues will be considered for White Stars in the first instance. As such, White Star evaluations can be completed fairly quickly. All successful White Stars are put on our list of venues in the running for a Red Star, pending visitation by a member of the Star Wine List team.
Red Star evaluations require us to have visited the venue. If we personally experience a venue that is not already a White Star, it can of course go straight to Red Star status. Until we have been able to get to you in person, we cannot assign a Red Star and this process can therefore take longer than that for our White Stars.
For many parts of the world where we don't have ambassadors or team members, we may not be able to evaluate for a Red Star at all, and a White Star will then be our highest possible recommendation.
At Star Wine List, we constantly assess our listings. If you have had a bad experience at a Star Wine List venue, please let us know via email to info@starwinelist.com.
FAQs
Does it cost anything to be listed by Star Wine List?
No. We do not accept payments for listings, and anyone pretending to represent us and making such a claim is committing a fraud (should that ever happen, please let us know via email to info@starwinelist.com.
Do you accept invitations to press dinners, winemaker dinners and similar?
Yes. Like many other guides and media houses, we do accept invitations to launch events, dinners, etc. This does not guarantee a listing. We evaluate venues and wine lists equally, and impartially.
Can I just send in my wine list and automatically be listed by Star Wine List?
You are very welcome to send in the list, but Star Wine List is not an open platform or a club for restaurants – it is a guide. Therefore, Star Wine List alone will make any decisions on whether to list a wine place or not.
Can a restaurant at a winery be listed by Star Wine List?
Yes.
Does Star Wine List recommend private wine clubs such as 67 Pall Mall?
No. We currently only recommend venues that are open to the public (even though we think 67 Pall Mall is great).
Are you planning to recommend wine shops as well?
For the moment, no. We are focusing on wine in the on-trade (meaning restaurants, wine bars, etc.). However, wine bars combined within shops can be recommended.
Cheers!