Interactive Maps Give a New Dimension to Wine

Some wine drinkers like wine-themed gadgets and others—we writers—like widgets that help them view their passion through different lenses. I particularly like maps for both the context they give in the big picture and, in digital versions, for the ability to drill down to a very granular level. In no particular order or ranking, here are a few interactive map sites that offer tidbits, tastings and plenty of time down the rabbit hole.

This down-to-business interactive map from World Population Review shows 2021 wine production by volume (gallons) for each state and its production share. It’s definitely low-tech—no real bells and whistles or swooshing emojis here—but it’s fun to click on each state and have the data pop up in the bar below. If you scroll down the site, the data are represented by rank with an interactive bar that presents the same production information.

Belle France is a walking and cycling holiday outfitter, but has a terrific interactive map of Loire Valley wineries that will please all wine geeks and students. Loire, as you know, is the longest of France’s river wine valleys, with tons of micro (and micro within micro) climates and various soils, so understanding its expansive offerings is a challenge. But here, color-coded by subregion, one click pops up an overview of the area, its soil, climate and grapes. Toggling the grape icon at the top will popup winery sites. Another useful feature is the “Match grapes you know with the appellation name on your bottle label” (needs a shorter name), which does just that when you hit the arrow in the lower right corner. That very long-named widget pops up the grapes and wine styles. If you get too far down the rabbit hole, hit the reset button to return to the home map and start all over again.

Germany’s multilayered classification system makes it a notoriously difficult wine region to understand.  This map produced by the Verband Deutscher Prädikatsweingüter (VDP) offers a view of the country’s top wine estates across 13 regions. While clearly a promotional vehicle for the estates in this classification—clicking on a winery’s pin brings up stylish producer profiles—and somewhat limited in scope, it’s a good starting point for understanding how the region lays out.

While we’re on the topic of complexity—and not just as a tasting note—the Vins de Bourgogne site hosts a color-coded interactive map of Burgundy showing the various appellation classifications (grand and premier crus, villages, regional). A limited menu allows you to search by town, event or producer, and zooming in will bring up a producer location pin. But the site technology is sleepy, slow and frustrating. Still, it’s an authoritative overview of those pesky appellation names. I’d rather have a version

of the wine book at Paris’s Les Climats, a beautifully bound and printed 314-page list that includes detailed maps of individually owned rows—a clear demonstration of Burgundy’s fragmentation (the term “Climat” has been in use since the Middle Ages to designate a precisely demarcated parcel of land dedicated to the vines). If there’s a site out there that combines the beauty of that wine list, practical Burgundy information and harnesses functionality technology, I’d like to know about that, please.

Everyvine was created by cartographer Thomas Jordan as a crowd-sourced mapping site for wine-centric locavores who want to know exactly where their wine comes from. Producers can parcel- and block-specific information such as grape varieties, clones and root stock planting dates and trellis methods. You can search by region or grape variety. I conducted a few random state searches and the quality or clarity of information was dependent on what the producers chose to upload. Most comprehensive is California’s Sonoma County, Jordan’s one-time home.

Surprisingly, The Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau hosts a pretty decent interactive map of American Viticultural Areas. Not surprisingly, the AVA Map Explorer is a bit of a visual bore, but you can change the base maps to street views, topo maps or satellite. The site contains good, if basic (just the facts, ma’am!), information about existing and proposed AVA boundaries. The “Add to my AVA” feature lets you create a reference library. Honing in on a specific AVA brings up options to see the legislation that designated the AVA (Federal Register and other dockets), and what’s cool about that is you can see all the rigorous requirements attached to creating an AVA—distinguishing soil and geology features, climate, elevation, etc.

Master sommelier Fernando Betata hosts a series of interactive maps on his site, some of which are Google Earth tours of regions (Germany, Burgundy’s Cote de Nuits, Madeira and Santorini) and others that use Google Earth-type technology to zoom in and out and offer popups with appellation-specific information such as notable vineyards, area size, soil, stylistic notes. The site is a little rudimentary and confusing to navigate—almost like he started something cool then abandoned it when technology got more sophisticated, but it’s a fun poke around with a glass of wine.

Winemaps.com offers a view of wineries and wine bars, identified by icons on a map. A combination of hovering over the icon and zooming in will activate a popup info box with the name and address of the site. You can also hone your search through regional filters that cover most wine-producing regions of the world and even down to the appellation level. It’s a bit slow and clumsy to move between pages and you’ll need some patience to navigate and wait for a new page load, but may be useful for initial wine-themed trip planning. A similarly modeled site, wineroad.com, focuses on Sonoma County wine country.