To have three restaurants in Missoula and two more nearby honored out of 2,917 worldwide is pretty impressive.

Those are the results presented to us by Wine Spectator, the world’s leading authority on wine. They have unveiled the winners of the 2021 Restaurant Awards, which honor the world’s best restaurants for wine from from all 50 states in the U.S. and more than 72 countries internationally.

This year’s Restaurant Awards issue, which was just released, reflects on how restaurateurs navigated an incredibly difficult period, with closures, labor shortages and product availability challenges. It's pretty cool that out of millions of restaurants, Missoula and surrounding areas would get five award winners.

Launched in 1981, Wine Spectator's Restaurant Awards are judged on three levels: the Award of Excellence (1,673 winners), the Best of Award of Excellence (1,141 winners)  and the Grand Award (103 winners).

Here area the area restaurants you might want to stop by and congratulate. The number of $ signs beside each one gives you a general idea of price ranges for wines. Wine Spectator gives their view on one or more of each restaurant's wine strengths.

MISSOULA

The Depot Restaurant, 201 West Railroad

Wine Strengths: California, Washington $$

FINN Restaurant, inside the DoubleTree Hotel, 100 Madison

Wine Strengths: California $$

Pangea Bar and Restaurant, 221 North HIggins

Wine Strengths: California $$

AND IN THE AREA

Pomp, the Resort at Paws Up, Greenough MT

Wine Strengths: California, Burgundy, Piedmont, Champagne  $$$

Triple Creek Ranch, Darby MT

Wine Strengths: California, Burgundy, France, Italy  $$

Wine Spectator is the world’s leading authority on wine. Anchored by Wine Spectator magazine, a print publication that reaches around 3 million readers worldwide, they also encompass the web's most comprehensive wine site and mobile platforms. Wine Spectator examines the world of wine from the vineyard to the table, with reviews of more than 15,000 wines each year.

Congratulation to all the winners in our area!

LOOK: Best Beers From Every State

To find the best beer in each state and Washington D.C., Stacker analyzed January 2020 data from BeerAdvocate, a website that gathers user scores for beer in real-time. BeerAdvocate makes its determinations by compiling consumer ratings for all 50 states and Washington D.C. and applying a weighted rank to each. The weighted rank pulls the beer toward the list's average based on the number of ratings it has and aims to allow lesser-known beers to increase in rank. Only beers with at least 10 rankings to be considered; we took it a step further to only include beers with at least 100 user rankings in our gallery. Keep reading to find out what the best beer is in each of the 50 states and Washington D.C.

 

 

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