Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Food & Drink

Thirsty? Here Are Some of the Best Accounts of Wine Instagram

By

Wine can be pretty, pretty stuff. It only takes a few minutes on Instagram to realize that. Beautifully colored liquid, photogenic reflections, bottles staged elegantly before exotic backdrops, a festive group toast — like a perfectly sabered bottle of Champagne, it’s the stuff of envy.

Naturally, some wine-related threads are better than others. In addition to armchair travel (and the jealousy that tends to serve as a chaser), you can also learn a thing or two about a lesser-known style, region, personality, or establishment. Here are a few labels, organizations, and personalities worth following on Instagram to keep your wine IQ healthy.

Recommended Videos

Guild Somm

https://www.instagram.com/p/By6MjqWpu2b/

Related

Guild Somm is a non-profit dedicated to wine education. More than anything it inspires, showcasing everything from beautiful artwork and vineyard finds to gorgeous wine country landscapes and cool wine history that appeals to more than just wine pros. For great, often visual storytelling, chase all the links to wine writer Kelli White’s wonderfully penned long-form tales.

Have & Meyer

Among New York’s finest wine bars, Have & Meyer also has an excellent social media presence. You can nerd out on unusual bottles and the natural wine movement or just enjoy thoughtfully curated food and wine imagery. Their Williamsburg location is reason enough to follow, a gorgeous bar stacked to the ceiling with great bottles, old Polaroids, and lovely Italian fare.

Kermit Lynch

The visual stories famed importer Kermit Lynch tells are informative and far-reaching, often detailing distant and intriguing wine zones. It’s one of the better ways to tour the many intriguing wine zones of planet Earth, if your wallet or schedule won’t quite allow the real thing. It’s also a great way to stumble into some delicious, reasonably priced wines with solid distribution.

Tank Garage

Based in the Napa Valley, Tank Garage is about as hip as modern wine culture gets. The Calistoga winery boasts a beautifully restored gas station for a tasting room and creates cool concept wines that serve as an homage to everything from AC/DC tracks to … other things. Their Instagram page is unsurprisingly catchy, with glossy imagery and the many pretty faces we like to associate with wine.

Willamette Valley Wineries Association

Plainly put, the Willamette Valley is one of the most breathtaking wine regions in the New World. The feed from the appellation’s leading trade organization is mouthwatering, fit with stunning vineyard views, interesting pours, winemaking tidbits, and well-appointed tasting rooms. The feed functions as a nice reminder that while the region has exploded as of late, it’s still a somewhat rugged, dog-friendly landscape where winemakers are accessible and the atmosphere, generally, is very relaxed.

Pascaline Lepeltier

Lepeltier is a master sommelier as well as the first female Meilleur Ouvrier de France. In other words, her palate is incredible and she’s helping to shake up a male-dominated industry. Her Instagram page follows her frequent travels to incredible cellars, treks through old vineyards, and the many joys of French gastronomy. You can feel her sense of genuine wonder and wine exploration as you swipe through her journeys.

Editors’ Recommendations

Topics
Mark Stock
Mark Stock
Contributor
Mark Stock is a writer from Portland, Oregon. He fell into wine during the Recession and has been fixated on the stuff since…
Horton Vineyard’s Petit Manseng Is Officially the Best Wine in Virginia
A red wine glass and wine.

Trust me, Virginia wine is coming. Not in droves, mind you, but here and there, on the shelves of your local bottle shop or on the list of your neighborhood’s most adventurous restaurant.
Here’s why: The state is presently at an intriguing crossroads. It’s been in the wine game long enough to know what works and, after many additional years of fine-tuning its treatment of the most suitable varieties, finds itself in a certain sweet spot. This is the fork in the road where labels decide to go for broke and appeal to the masses or continue the pioneering projects that got them to this very point (or some combination thereof).
Quite a few of the wines from the Commonwealth are good. Others, not so much. Perhaps more importantly, they’re fairly intrepid, just about across the board. In other words, while the region has achieved some noteworthiness among inner circles and at a few stray competitions, Virginia is not yet known for its wine (even though it produces the 8th most in the country). That translates to some freewheeling winemaking that can lead to interesting grapes and unexpected blends, all within a time frame wherein the state is still carving out its own, still-to-come legacy.

A lot of states we now know to be excellent wine outlets had similar phases — stretches of obvious emerging talent framed by a Wild West, DIY sort of sensibility. For consumers, it’s one of the coolest times to explore a region, as it typically lacks the crowds and commercialization that can come with fame. Some would argue that California had that in the 1970s and 80s, Walla Walla in the early aughts, and the Willamette Valley up until about a decade ago.
Presently, there are about 300 producers in the state and counting, pulling from about 4,000 acres of planted vineyard land. They exist all over the state, from the Blue Ridge Mountains to diverse valley floors and shorelines. Virginia’s wine history goes way back to the Founding Fathers era, when folk like Thomas Jefferson dabbled in the craft, with Jefferson even establishing his own estate vineyard (a pair of them at Monticello, in fact). The oldest wine grape planted in American soil, Norton, hails from Virginia.
Virginian winegrowers deal with their share of hardships. They come in the form of hot, humid summers and blisteringly cold winters. Picking times become crucial as moisture can cause rot and high temperatures can lead to over-ripening on the vine.
Every year since 1982, the state has put on what’s called the Governor’s Cup. Judged by a panel of wine pros, the tasting whittles down hundreds of entries made within the state to the top dozen Virginia wines. In 2019, some 510 wines were tasted from about 100 producers, all crafted from 100% Virginia fruit. The winning dozen included a mix of Bordeaux-style red blends (or “meritage” wines), Cab Franc, Tannat, and more.

Read more
The Block Distilling is releasing an Amaro
The Block Distilling is releasing a new after-dinner drink
Block Distilling

The Block Distilling, well-known for creative and innovative spirits, is again branching out into a classic drink style: the after-dinner drink. It already launched its signature Apéritif and is set to release an Amaro. So now, drinkers have two choices for nuanced, complex drinks after a heavy meal or before bed nightcap.
Block Distilling Amaro

This 35% ABV Amaro is made with a blend of herbs and botanicals, including birch, spearmint, anise, sarsaparilla, and more. One of its more unique ingredients is dehydrated sugar. This unique amaro was also finished in The Block’s previously used whiskey barrels. The result is a spicy, complex, nuanced, highly sippable after-dinner drink you’ll go back to again and again.

Read more
Wow your guests with these seasonal cocktails for Thanksgiving
From cranberry juice to warm apple, these are cosy flavors for the season
Thanksgiving dinner table at home.

The guests are on their way, you've made the cranberry sauce, the turkey is in the oven -- there's just one thing left to make a Thanksgiving party a success, and that's some seasonal themed cocktails. While you might find it easiest to batch your Thanksgiving drinks if you're hosting a large crowd, if you have a smaller gathering or you're just very ambitious then you can wow your guests with specialty cocktails.

Flavors for the season include nods to food with options like cranberry and maple syrup, but you can also go a bit unexpected by trying out drinks like a flip, which uses egg yolk, or a blend of warm apple juice and the wine-based spirit Metaxa. This selection of cocktail ideas has something for everyone, from the easy fruity sippers to the spicy warming comfort drinks, so you can pick a cocktail for each of your guests and enjoy some more unusual seasonal options for your festivities.
The Thanksipping

Read more