Four Restaurants Earn First-Time Grand Award Honors in 2013

Wine Spectator recognizes 3,793 restaurants for their outstanding wine lists

Nathan Wesley

Jul 8, 2013

Four dining spots—La Ciau Del Tornavento in Italy, Per Se in New York, the Royal Mail Hotel in Australia and the Village Pub in Woodside, Calif.—are this year’s new Grand Award winners, marking them "must-visit" destinations for wine lovers. They join 69 other restaurants around the world that successfully renewed this exclusive honor as part of Wine Spectator's 2013 Restaurant Wine List Awards.

While the two international restaurants draw their wine list strengths from their neighboring wine regions, Per Se and the Village Pub take a more global approach, offering an adventurous, food-friendly mix of classic labels, rising stars and underdogs yet to be discovered.

Wine Spectator’s Grand Award, which premiered in 1981, is the magazine’s highest honor for a wine list. Recipients typically offer more than 1,500 selections, with superior depth and breadth in many of the wine world’s major regions. Wine Spectator editors personally assess each candidate for a Grand Award, inspecting the cellar and evaluating service, cuisine and ambiance.

The 2013 Restaurant Wine List Award winners span all 50 states and 76 other countries and territories, along with 11 cruise ships. This year, 2,870 restaurants earned the program's entry-level Award of Excellence. These winners offer an interesting and diverse selection of 100 or more wines that are well-presented and thematically match the restaurant cuisine. In addition, 850 restaurants earned the Best of Award of Excellence, Wine Spectator’s middle-tier award that honors wine lists of 400 or more quality selections. These award winners must also offer significant vintage depth or superior breadth in one or more major wine regions.

A full list of the 3,793 winners is featured in the Aug. 31 issue of Wine Spectator, which also includes analysis of the current restaurant wine scene and profiles of this year’s new Grand Award winners. All of the restaurants can also be found in WineSpectator.com’s free-access Restaurant Search, along with details about their wine selection, cuisine, prices and key staff.