“Reportedly Based on Five Criteria”

What Are Michilen’s Vineyard Ratings Actually Worth?

The Michelin Guide has provided plenty of benchmarks over the years. The Guide has been a shorthand for excellence in hospitality since 1900. When the Michelin car company published the first blue book listing the finest restaurants in France, it was a free service to encourage new car owners to drive more. 

When it expanded from France into Belgium in 1904, it was already generally recognized as a seminal arbiter of haute cuisine. By 1911, restaurants as far south as Egypt and as far north as England enjoyed the distinction of a write-up by the Michelin Guide. Oddly enough, there were no stars at this point, reviews were based on style of cuisine rather than on the quality therein. Most of the Guide at this point was devoted to hotels, as the newly-accessible motorcars of the day were still somewhat unreliable and their top speeds still languished under 40 miles an hour. In 1922, the Michelin Company began to charge seven francs for the Guide. They expanded the increasingly-popular restaurant portion and made the presentation glossier for a more discerning clientele of drivers and gourmands. 

It wasn’t until 1926 that establishments were awarded even one star, reserved for only the best of dining experiences. Ten years later, in 1936, the Guide revitalized its system to what we know today. According the the Michelin Guide itself:

One star is awarded to establishments that are “very good in their category,”

Two stars are awarded to establishments that are “worth a detour,” and

Three stars are awarded to establishments that are “worth a special journey.”

These are the criteria they’ve used since then for hotels and wine estates as well as restaurants.

As during the Great War before it, Michelin stopped publishing the Guide during the Second World War. It was reworked for military use as the maps of Europe were the most accurate available. With few changes in the wake of the war due to rationing, they were able to reprint the Guide for civilian use within a week of V-E Day to celebrate the end of the Axis threat; since then, the Guide has remained in steady publication. 

Over the years, they have added more to their three star system, including the “keys” for hotels, the “bib gourmand” for affordable establishments (three courses and a glass of wine for under market value wherever the restaurant might be), and the “green star” for an especially environmentally-conscious establishment.

In 2005, Michelin published its first list of American restaurants, focusing on New York specifically. This was followed by Tokyo in 2007, Hong Kong in 2008, and Canada in 2022. Individual U.S. states and cities have commissioned the Guide to review their restaurants and hotels since 2005, but New York still holds the record number of starred establishments at 72 awarded restaurants and hotels. Recently my own home town of Cincinnati shelled out to have their own restaurant scene reviewed (or possibly eviscerated) just in 2026.

This last fact is one that cannot be avoided when talking about Michelin. The Guide sustains itself by the annual fees it collects from the places it reviews. While driving around eating at elegant restaurants might seem like a dream job, make no mistake, the pressure is on for these inspectors. They work like secret agents. The stealthy individuals who review establishments for new stars and make certain already starred restaurants are keeping up their standards, are not cheap, nor is a meal at a Michelin establishment. Over time, while the focus might have moved away from hotels, in 2024, the Guide resumed publishing one, two, or three keys for particularly meritorious places to stay the night. In 2026, they began to award grapes (one, two, or three, of course) to wine estates.

In July, the first grapes were awarded to 94 estates in Burgundy, the heart of French wine. Almost immediately, the experts were skeptical. Not only was Michelin functionally unable to present exact criteria for its reviews, but it almost seemed to be based more on vibes than anything concrete. It was a few months before Michelin published their booklet on Burgundy when Pairings president William Cole and I were first discussing the issues with reviewing wine objectively. Most of our complaints about the present system had been about the deliberately opaque 100 point scale favored by such imaginative luminaries as Wine Enthusiast and MasterClass-awarded wine influencer James Suckling. We decided to sit down and codify our system down to the letter after Domaine Arnoux-Lachaux handed Michelin back their one grape. 

In a statement put out by the winemakers, the mother and son duo Florence Arnoux-Lachaux and Charles Lachaux, it was affirmed: “Since 2020, we have deliberately chosen not to submit our wines for press reviews or ratings. We have therefore asked Michelin to remove the Domaine from the selection, in keeping with this long-standing position.”

So, Florence and Charles, this is for you. Some goddam, well-deserved clarity.

When we review a bottle, Pairings Magazine and C&C Media will be offering our objective opinions, based on an equation calculated by a panel of certified and experienced wine experts. Our reviewers are not secret agents, nor would we want them to be. I’ve grown to distrust the Guide over the years because of their gotcha! approach to dining. While this works better in restaurants, its downright insulting to wine estates. The hardworking people who spend their days in frost and fire alike don’t need an inspector who has never pumped-over a tank or picked a bunch from the vine telling them what their product is worth. Besides that, how could one manage to rate a bottle of wine so simple with one, two, or three grapes. Yet, somehow, Michelin has the overconfidence to do just that.

Our panel of four to five experts will stick to the established systems—wine is for the consumer, and a 100 point scale is easy to understand. But! in order to remain true to our name, we will present you, then, with a dual-axis scale, with each scale equaling 50 points. 

Axis One focuses on the technical base. We will test the wines with regard to the complexity of flavors on the nose (10 points) and palette (10 points more), the quality of the product (10 points again)—that is to say whether or not there is some fault with the bottle—, the story the winemaker wants to tell with their land, their winemaking techniques, and their philosophy (10 points), and finally the balance of the overall product in the bottle (10 points). 

Axis Two scores the Pairing Synergy. Here, we will test the wine’s compatibility with a dish that the winemaker themselves suggests as the perfect food pairing. To ensure objectivity, the scoring will be rooted in culinary science and chemistry, and anchored to a specific dish identified by the producer. We will even provide you with the recipe, so that you might be able to enjoy this wine as much as we did, and exactly as the winemaker suggests. Our experts will examine the weight & texture matching, flavor bridging, and structural interaction between the food and the wine. And while this science-based framework ensures objectivity, it also allows the producer to have a say in how their product could be enjoyed. When it comes to the “ideal pairing,” we want to include their opinions on their own product—after all, they are the experts. In this way, we hope to earn the respect of winemakers, and deliver scores and reviews that can be trusted by you. Our panel of experts, whose names, certifications, and experience will be printed right beside the scores they give, will open a new level of transparency never before seen in the wine industry. It’s time for all of us sommeliers, importers, reviewers, and writers to put our money where our mouths are.

When I was judging the Cincinnati International Wine Festival in 2025, we went through a pretty cut-and-dry training. We were instructed to review wines by whether or not they were “a valid expression of the grape;” it might not be your favorite, but Apothic Red Blend is technically a valid expression of a zinfandel-based wine. We were told that a score under 15 out of a possible 20 points for a glass meant that the bottle must have a flaw, such as cork taint or maderization. No thought was given to why a producer made their wine in one way or another, how they interacted with their landscape, or what dish might have made that wine pop.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be in the business of reviewing valid wine as valid. I want to get to know the fascinating, talented people who make grapes into what’s been called “the second most complex liquid after human blood.” While that might not be true, the experts certainly want you to think it is. I’m done with 100 point scales, three-grape systems, and valid expressions of grapes.

I hope you’re with me too.