FAQ

General Information

Is AmericanWineryGuide.com free?

Yes, all of AmericanWineryGuide.com’s features are free. AmericanWineryGuide.com pays for the site through advertising and a commission on wine and accessory purchases.

I would like to write winery reviews for AmericanWineryGuide.com. How do I become an AmericanWineryGuide.com correspondent?

If you are a talented writer who loves wine and wine tourism and would like to write for AmericanWineryGuide.com, let us know via e-mail. Please include the region you would like to cover along with your experience/qualifications and a few samples of your writing. Although wine expertise helps, a passion for wine, tourism and people – and the ability to convey an experience – is the main qualification.

Winery, Event, Business Listings

My winery, or one of my favorite wineries, is not listed on your site. How do I get the winery added to the site?

Please provide the winery information via e-mail. We will verify the information and add the winery to AmericanWineryGuide.com as soon as possible.

I’ve noticed that some of the winery information is incorrect. What should I do to have it corrected?

Please inform us of the inaccurate or incomplete information via e-mail.

AmericanWineryGuide.com spends significant resources trying to maintain the accuracy of its winery profiles and greatly
appreciates your efforts to make this site better for all of its users.

How do I add photos to a winery’s profile page?

Access the winery’s profile page and select “Add Photo”. Only registered users can add photos, but photos do not have to associated with a
winery review.  All uploaded photos are public.

Reviews

Why do only some wineries have AmericanWineryGuide.com reviews?

Our goal is to eventually create an AmericanWineryGuide.com review for every winery in the U.S. Regional correspondents, with occasional input from AmericanWineryGuide.com staff, determine the wineries they will visit and review. If you are a winery owner and would like us to review your winery, please send us an e-mail.

When I review a winery, I can provide a wine rating score for red and white wines, but when I use the winery search, I can’t search by those user-provided wine ratings. What gives?

This issue caused hours of debate at AmericanWineryGuide.com. The site currently provides the ability for users to search for wineries using an aggregated wine rating based on hundreds of thousands of reviews from the world’s most respected critics. We considered also providing the ability to search for wineries based on visitor wine ratings, but it signficantly increased the complexity of the site and created numerous design issues. In the end, we decided that the cost outweighed the benefit. Although users cannot use visitor wine ratings as a filter, the visitor wine ratings are displayed in the reviews section of the winery’s profile page.

Can I provide a review of businesses other than wineries?

Absolutely!  Your reviews of wine tourism-related businesses helps other wine tourists find the best places to eat, sleep, shop, etc.

How do I submit a review?

From the winery or wine-related business profile page click the review icon located above the photo box.  If you are not already registered and logged on, you will be prompted to do so. Complete the review form by providing a 1 to 5 star rating for each category and provide a written review letting others know what you liked and didn’t like about the business.You can also add photos to your review by clicking the “Add Photos” button.

Who Can See My Reviews?

All winery reviews are public and associated with your username.

What Happens When I Recommend a Review?

When you click on the “Recommend This Review” or the “Thumbs Up” link next to a review, you are congratulating the reviewer for writing a great review and recommending the review to other users. The number or recommended reviews is recorded for each review and reviewer making it easier to find high quality reviews. The individual who wrote the review is notified that you recommended their review.  Your recommended reviews are listed on your “My AmericanWineryGuide.com” page.

Favorites

What are Favorites?

Adding a winery or other business or event to your favorites makes it easy for you to find the winery or business on future site visits and provides you the ability to add that winery, business or event to an itinerary.

What are groups?

Groups are used to organize your favorite wineries, events and businesses. Common groups are based on specific trips, winery characteristics, business types and locations. When creating an itinerary, you can include all the wineries, events and businesses from a corresponding group or you can choose entities from several different groups.

Itineraries

What are Itineraries?

Itineraries are used to plan a visit to your favorite wineries, wine-related businesses and events. Itineraries can be private, shared or public and can be printed and e-mailed. Public itineraries can be copied, edited and saved as your own itinerary and are a great way to list and display groups of favorites or related wineries.

I want to create an itinerary but I can’t add wineries or other businesses to the itinerary I created.

Only wineries, events and businesses that have been added to your favorites can be added to an itinerary. Use the various search pages to find the wineries, events, and businesses that you want to consider visiting and click “Add to Favorites” from either the search page or the profile page.

Winery & Event Ratings

How are AmericanWineryGuide.com wine ratings calculated?

The AmericanWineryGuide.com Wine Rating is calculated using scores from several leading wine reviewers and publications, to include Wine Spectator, Wine Advocate, Stephen Tanzer, Wine Enthusiast, Wine & Spirits, Jancis Robinson, Burghound, Connoisseur’s Guide to California Wine, PinotFile, Pinot Report, Burghound, Rhone Report, Beverage Tasting Institute, Grapevine and the New York Cork Report, and gold medals awarded at major international wine competitions.  The AmericanWineryGuide.com Rating is associated with the winery and each of its varieties, vice individual wines, and includes the five most recent vintages. In addition, a multiplier is applied to account for the differing number of wines reviewed for each winery. Instead of providing an average 100 point rating for each winery, AmericanWineryGuide.com converts the average score (to include the “number of reviews” multiplier) into 5-star rating scale. Approximate 100-point to 5-point score mappings used at AmericanWineryGuide.com is provided below.

I’ve noticed that some wineries advertise on your site. Do these wineries get a little boost in their wine or winery scores for their sponsorship?

Absolutely not. AmericanWineryGuide.com was created as a system to objectively find America’s best wineries based on user’s priorities. Altering the results based on winery sponsorship would completely undermine the site’s reason for existence and credibility. Those winery’s that place a priority on meeting or exceeding customer expectation and have chosen to sponsor this site receive a number of benefits, but higher wine and winery ratings is not one of them.

Winery, Event & Business Search

Why do the list of businesses in the right hand column keep changing when I interact with the map?

The list in the right hand column is designed to update automatically to display the names of the wineries, events and businesses that are visible on the map.

What does “include unknowns” under the tasting fee slider bar mean?

We do not yet have tasting fee information for every winery in the U.S. If you do not select “include unknowns”, only wineries that match the price range specified will be returned. If you place a check mark next to “include unknowns”, wineries that match the price range specified PLUS wineries whose tasting fees are unknown, i.e. wineries whose tasting fees MIGHT match the price range specified, are displayed. By including unknowns, you are basically filtering out any wineries whose tasting fees are known not to be within the specified range.

What is the best way to interact with winery search results?

The winery search, as well as the event and wine-business searches, can result in very large result sets that may negatively impact your computer’s performance. Start your search by applying filters from the left side of the page. After your results are returned, sort the results if desired and then click on the state name in the right hand column to view the results list. From there, navigate via the list or map to find wineries to explore and add to your favorites.

How does AmericanWineryGuide.com deal with additional or offsite tasting locations?

Each tasting location, whether it is the main winery location or one of it’s offsite tasting locations, is mapped and has a profile page. The main winery profile page lists the offsite locations, and the offsite locations reference the main winery location. Users can provide reviews for both types of locations. Tasting locations that house several wineries are treated one of two ways. If the location provides seperate tasting experiences for each hosted winery, each winery at the location will have it’s own profile page. If there are not seperate tasting experiences, i.e. wines from several different wineries are poured at one tasting bar during a single tasting experience, there is only one profile page for that location. The wine rating for a “single experience” tasting room that pours wines from several different wineries is calculated by averaging the wine ratings from all of the wineries pouring at that location.