A wine professional’s foundational goal is to make others happy. The restaurant sommelier aims to recommend a bottle that best enhances a guest’s dining experience. The wine educator strives toward helping their clientele determine the varieties and styles they enjoy the most. The bottle shop proprietor seeks to satisfy customers by pointing them toward bottles that fit an intended mood and align with their sensibilities.

In each scenario, success comes from the wine pro setting their own preferences aside for the good of others. This noble gesture comes with a caveat: The wine they’re recommending may be a label, variety, or style that they find to be a bit overrated. They’ll still suggest the wine if they believe it will please the customer or guest, but they may not necessarily be thrilled with doing so.

With that in mind, we asked 12 wine professionals to name the wines they feel take up too much room on the hype train. The wines they chose aren’t objectively bad, of course. They’re just subjectively not for them.

The Most Overrated Wines, According to Wine Pros:

• Natural wine
• Wines in heavy bottles
• Chillable reds
• Wines that overemphasize terroir
• New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc
• Big Cabernets and Cab blends as holiday gifts
• Sancerre
• Overtly funky natural wines
• Expensive Pinot Grigio
• Napa wines

“There’s a lot of stiff competition out there, like big brand California Cabernet Sauvignons and limp, insipid Sancerre, but honestly I think natural wine has had its time and would benefit from taking less of a spotlight. I’m all for emphasizing sustainable viticulture and letting fruit speak for itself with clarity and purity, but does every aspirational wine list or trendy opening have to lean exclusively into ‘natty’ producers? Don’t get me wrong, there are incredibly talented natural winemakers who create standout and differentiated expressions of both familiar and novel grapes, but there’s an awful lot of haphazardly made, overpriced, and frankly tedious wines out there that apparently we need to be enthusiastic about.” —Gareth Rees, beverage director, Ilili, NYC

“Absurdly heavy wine bottles. They basically act as free weights for somms, and they mostly carry mediocre plonk inside. They’re the Hummers of the wine world — all about the image, but what’s under the hood is an engine that barely moves the needle. The memo needs to go out that a wine’s quality isn’t proportional to how much it tests your grip strength.” —Chris Schmid, partner/SVP strategic partnerships, Prestige Ledroit Distributing Co., Elkridge, Md.

“Chillable reds. I know they are having their moment right now, but I fear the market has become oversaturated with them.” —Jade Palmer, wine educator, The Oenophile Institute, Smyrna, Ga.

“While terroir is an essential aspect of winemaking, the romanticized notion that it solely defines a wine’s quality can overshadow the winemaker’s skill and choices. It’s important to recognize that both factors contribute to the final product.” —Grant Hewitt, vice president beverage, Loews Hotels & Co., NYC

“I’d say one of the most overrated trends in the wine world is the obsession with natural wine as a blanket category. The term itself has become so loosely defined and overused that it often prioritizes trendiness over quality or transparency. And while I think it’s great to see how natural wine has brought more attention to sustainable practices, the hype can sometimes overshadow incredible wines being made with equally thoughtful, low-intervention approaches that don’t necessarily carry the ‘natural’ tag.” —Matt Bostic, sommelier/hospitality director, Llano Estacado Winery, Lubbock, Texas

“New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc is overrated. These wines of low-to-mediocre quality are easily accessible, but often taste like candied grapefruit and can sometimes exhibit cat-pee-like aromas with a bit of hay and grass. The flavors are so intense, it will completely take over any food that could be enjoyed with it when paired. It pays to look at smaller regions that are really trying to craft a wine instead — a Sauvignon Blanc from South America and even Greece can give way more bang for your buck. They have great flavors that are well integrated and suited to being enjoyed with food.” —Autumn Gilliam, owner, The Adventurous Sip, Rochester, Minn.

“Overtly funky natural wines are overrated. There is a spectrum of natural wines: Some taste more like kombucha, cider, or sour beer, whereas others taste more squarely like wine. Unfortunately, it seems that natural wines have turned into a ‘how much funk can one handle?’ category.” —Brianne Cohen, wine educator, Brianne Cohen Wine & Events, Los Angeles

“I think big Cabs and Cab blends are overrated around the holidays, yet they tend to be what people buy for presents. I like to remind people that lighter wines are great fits for the season. Get your friends something they can enjoy without food! Huge, vintage Bordeaux have their place, of course, but I almost never want to drink them during the holiday season. I love a good Trousseau or Gamay Noir instead.” —Matt Robinson, founder, The Scout Wine Bar & Bottle Shop, Gresham, Ore.

“If I could only select one, I’d say Sancerre. People order it without really giving much thought to what’s behind it. Of course, there are beautiful Sancerre out there, and I champion them often. However, due to the intensely aromatic profile that’s mostly of an industrial, packeted yeast-driven nature, the true essence of everyday Sancerre is rarely revealed and the iconic or intrinsic producers are rarely found.” —Jill Mott, wine director, The Carlyle, a Rosewood Hotel, NYC

“I’d argue that natural wine is one of the most overrated categories. That said, I do have some caveats. There’s a tendency to assume that if a wine is labeled as ‘natural,’ it should be funky and filled with what many winemakers would consider flaws — and those wines often get overhyped. However, as with most trends, the pendulum eventually swings back toward balance.” —Michelle Morin, director of beverage, Waldorf Astoria Monarch Beach Resort & Club, Dana Point, Calif.

“Expensive Pinot Grigio. ‘Inexpensive’ does not inherently mean ‘bad.’ There are plenty of examples of Pinot Grigio with good character at a lower price point. But too many people pay a premium for bad ones with strong brand recognition. and it makes me a bit sad.” —Chris Struck, Wine Educator, NYC

“The most overrated wines would be those from Napa Valley. Now, Napa Valley can produce some delicious wines, but oftentimes you’re paying more for the name and less for the quality of the wine. I have tasted plenty of Napa Valley wines as a beverage director, and I have never tasted one where I could not find a similar wine of equal or higher quality for half the price. If someone is dead set on a California wine, I always push people more towards the [state’s] Paso Robles region. You can get phenomenal wines in quality and flavors for much less than a Napa Valley wine.” —Tyler Flynn, beverage director, EsterEv, Milwaukee

*Image retrieved from Andrii Zastrozhnov – stock.adobe.com

The article We Asked 12 Wine Pros: What’s the Most Overrated Wine? (2024) appeared first on VinePair.