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Starter List

The People’s Vote · Closes September 30

The Underdog 101

Everything they don’t teach you in Wine 101.The world’s best wines aren’t always the famous ones. Pick up to three from the field of 101 below, name one favourite, and the result decides which grape gets the next full guide.

Cast your ballot

Voting closes September 30, 2026 — 17 days left.

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0 / 3 picked

One ballot per email. Voting adds you to the Underdog Starter List; unsubscribe anytime. 21+ only.

Another way in

Or start from a wine you already drink.

One hundred and one grapes is a lot to hold in your head. Pick the famous wine you reach for most and the underdogs that stand in for it land on your ballot, ready to adjust.

Your picks land on the ballot above. Nothing is submitted until you enter your email there.

The Underdog Index

Our sourced, data-backed ranking — built transparently from published wine sources on the merits below. The considered answer.

The People’s Choice

The live reader vote — the one on this page. Where the crowd and the Index disagree is the fun part.

The grape cards

A shareable reference card for grapes on the ballot — pronunciation, taste, where to start, and the famous wine each one swaps for. Tap a card to read the full guide. New cards land as the vote runs.

For readers 21 and over.

How we built this

“Underdog” isn’t a dataset you can look up — nobody publishes an objective ranking of it. So the Underdog Index is a transparent composite we assemble from published sources, scoring each grape on seven merits. We show the recipe so you can argue with it. The numbers behind the Index are being sourced now and publish with the first results — we won’t show a figure until it’s real and cited.

20%
Critical regardHow respected the grape is among wine professionals — drawn from underrated-wine roundups and critic scores, deliberately widened beyond US/English-language media.
22%
Obscurity & rarityHow overlooked it is by everyday drinkers — scarce plantings and near-absence from mainstream shelves. The more hidden, the more underdog.
12%
Quality-to-fame gapHow far it punches above its reputation — regard beyond what its fame alone would predict.
18%
Value for moneyHow much it over-delivers for the price — the heart of an underdog's appeal.
10%
Reader interestWhether anyone is actually curious — real search interest, so the list isn't pure esoterica.
10%
Heritage & indigeneityWhether it's a native or heritage grape rather than an international transplant — the throughline of this whole site.
8%
Underrepresented adjustmentA deliberate counterweight to establishment bias, so overlooked origins and producers aren't buried by the very gatekeeping that made them underdogs.

One discipline keeps it honest: “critical regard” alone would just re-crown the wines the establishment already blesses — the opposite of an underdog list — so we widen the sources and add an underrepresented-origins counterweight. The People’s Choice vote is the living counterpart to all of it.

The field of 101

Every grape on the ballot. Where we’ve written a guide, it’s linked — start exploring before you vote.

For readers 21 and over. Voting adds you to the Underdog Starter List; unsubscribe anytime.