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I spent months reading websites about wine; I came to discover that there are a lot of them. Now I have assessed them and ranked only the 50 ‘best’.

Herebelow is an analysis of the results.

The big guns

The traffic levels are very much below those of mainstream operations.
Yet a few sites dominate the pack. This is partly due to their early appearance on the Web (Wine Spectator, Wine lovers page). It is also partially because they have the weight of an offline publication behind them (Wine Spectator, the New York Times, Wine Advocate).

The challengers are Vinography and Dr. Vino.

Diversity

In the last few years the web offer has immensely diversified. Everybody and their wine supplier now has a blog.
There now are many quality wine critics who comment on line. Some belong to the mainstream media, others not.
You can have your voice too and this is good for eveybody — except some big brands.
In this pack of numerous wine websites, however, some rise steadily by virtue of:

• producing consistently good content that people want to read;
• or being regularly cited by their peers.

Two consistent sites doubled their valuation this quarter: Wine weekly to #24 and Gollywinedrops to #42.

How to participate

For a website to be eligible to the next issue of the Cellarer wine directory, the below conditions must be met:

1. The main topic should be wine.
2. Producing estates and wine sellers are excluded. Some of them run wonderful websites but the type of information is different.
3. Either the PageRank is at least 4 or the number of visitors is at least 1,000 per month.

If you disagree with the directory criteria, please comment below or e-mail me.

Once the above conditions are fulfilled the best ranked websites are considered for addition to a search engine dedicated to wine and food.

Here are the criteria I use for ranking the sites. You can follow the directory evolution by subscribing to the feed on websites or by subscribing to the mailing list about website optimization.

This is an analysis of the ranking of wine websites.

Analysis of results

Two websites clearly stand out as the biggest wine hubs: the Wine Spectator and the Wine lovers page. This in part is explained by their quality. It is also explained by the long time they have been known by wine enthusiasts.

Having an off-line reputation clearly helps. This is illustrated by the presence in the top five of the Wine Spectator, the New York Times and Robert Parker.

In the last few years the wine web offer has immensely diversified. There now are many quality wine critics who comment on line. The latest domain names listed are from 2006 and 2007:

• Behind the Vines
• Bigger Than Your Head
• French Scout

Actually I have examined some websites that do not appear in this top 50. They are not listed because the others are even better!

In general the valuation shows an institutional bias. This is why I computed a second metric: the website popularity. Please click on the ‘Popularity’ heading to sort wine websites by public support.

What trends can you see from the rankings?

How to participate

For a website to be eligible to the next Cellarer.com wine directory, the below conditions must be met:

1. The main topic should be wine.
2. Producing estates and wine sellers are excluded. Some of them run wonderful websites but the information type is different.
3. Either the number of visitors is at least 1,000 per month or the PageRank is at least 4.

If you disagree with the directory criteria, please comment below.

Once the above conditions are fulfilled the best ranked websites are considered for addition to a search engine dedicated to wine and food.

Here are the criteria I use for ranking the sites. You can follow the directory evolution by subscribing to the feed on websites or by subscribing to the mailing list about website optimization.