Depending on the size and type of your restaurant, you will probably want to use a different approach for making a wine list. In general, there are a number of important factors to take into account, including location, audience, and size of the main food menu. With that in mind, here are 5 proven approaches for making an extraordinary wine list.

#1: By region or country of origin

In many ways, this approach that focuses on region or country of origin probably makes the most intuitive sense. For example, you would group all of your French wines together in one section of your wine list, all of your Italian wines together, and all of your California wines together. That way, a customer who prefers wines from France could immediately turn to one section of the wine list, and then begin to go much deeper into specific appellations (e.g. Loire Valley, Alsace, Languedoc, Burgundy, Bordeaux).

However, this approach was much more viable when there were only a handful of top wine-producing nations in the world. At one time, it might have been most practical only to focus on France, Italy and California. But what about Chile or Australia in the New World? Or Spain and Portugal in Europe? The more regions that you add to your wine list, the more it begins to resemble a geographical atlas. Instead of making the job easier for your restaurant patron, you might unintentionally introduce a level of confusion and complexity. Of course, there are some instances where this approach would make a lot of sense – such as if you are a tapas restaurant and you are looking to highlight your Spanish wine selections.

#2:  By varietal

The second most popular approach for organizing a wine list is based on varietal. For example, you would group all of your Cabernet Sauvignon wines together, all of your Chardonnay wines together, and all of your Syrah wines together. That way, a restaurant patron who enjoys a specific wine varietal will be able to find it very easily on your wine list. You can even add a brief introduction to each grape variety at the beginning of every new section.

While this approach can be very effective, it also can cause uncertainty in the minds of consumers if wines are not carefully selected. For example, French Chardonnay wines are quite different from heavily oaked California Chardonnay wines. And Syrah wines from France are going to be quite different from Shiraz wines from Australia. Thus, a restaurant patron might order one type of wine because it appears within a certain section of your wine list, only to find out later that he or she might have been better served by choosing a less familiar wine elsewhere on the wine list.

#3: By style or weight

In order to avoid this issue of customers inadvertently ordering the wrong wine, some sommeliers prefer to combine wines of a similar style together. For example, a wine list might group together all “crisp and refreshing” wines together in one section, and then all “bold and robust” wines together in another section of the wine list. This makes it easier for the restaurant patron to find wines similar to those that he or she has enjoyed in the past. It also makes it possible to create a certain “mood” with the wine list. For example, during summer time, listing all the “crisp and refreshing” wines together in one place might be one way to encourage patrons to consider ordering a bottle of wine. Or, for steakhouse patrons, organizing all the “steakhouse reds” together in one section vastly simplifies the task of which wine to pair with a steak or chops meal.

You could just as easily group all wines on the wine list by weight. The convention is to list wines from full-bodied to light-bodied, so a wine list might start with Cabernet Sauvignon and then continue to lighter reds (e.g. Pinot Noir) before moving on to Rosé wines and white wine selections. This approach is best suited for wine by the glass (BTG) lists or for wine lists that are much shorter in nature. You wouldn’t, for example, use this approach if your current wine list is much more than a few pages long.

#4: By theme

In recent years, a new approach to organizing a wine list involves listing wines by theme. For example, if a restaurant would like to highlight local winemakers, there might be a section dedicated to “local” wineries. Or, if a restaurant would like to highlight its organic or biodynamic wines, this is also a great way to highlight these wines. This approach works best when combined with a  similar approach to the food menu. A “farm-to-table” restaurant that emphasizes fresh, local ingredients on its food menu would be a great example of a restaurant that might want to emphasize local winemakers. And a vegan restaurant that specializes in GMO-free and gluten-free food offerings might be a great example of a restaurant that could really benefit from a wine menu specifically highlighting all of its great organic or biodynamic wines.

#5: A hybrid approach

At the end of the day, you will probably need to consider a hybrid approach that combines two or more of the approaches above. You can think of this as “nesting” one organizational approach inside of another organizational approach. Thus, your main way of organizing the wine list might be by region. But then, within each region, you would sub-divide all the wines by style. Or, if you choose to make wine varietal your major organizing principle, you might then decide to further sub-divide all of the wines by weight.

In making a wine list, you want to keep the focus on the customer. A restaurant patron is going to be much more likely to splurge on an expensive bottle of wine if you make it easier for him or her to find it without a lot of time flipping through multiple pages of a menu. Moreover, if you take a very consistent approach to organizing your wine list, it also makes it much easier to up-sell a customer to a wine in the same category, but at a slightly higher price point. There is no one-size-fits-all approach for organizing a wine list, but there are certain guidelines for thinking about the types of wines you would like to feature, and how to present them in the best possible light.