Not all wine lists are created equal. Some aren’t created at all, in fact; the wines on them are more or less distributed. By that I mean more than a few restaurateurs know heaps about food but only a pittance about wine. They put themselves in the hands of a large distributor or two to compile their wine list–with all the business agendas you can imagine in that scenario.

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The winners are the behemoth wineries, which carry weight with their volume–the names that bring on deja vu when you pick up the list in a new bistro. Of course, big doesn’t mean bad. And meeting old friends in new places makes you feel safe. But is that what you want on a Friday night, in a buzzing restaurant, with a plate of potato-crusted scallops on wild greens in front of you? With the plethora of wines around us in the West, we can do better than safe.