How It Works
You’re busy. You work hard. And when the day’s dust has settled, you just want to pour a good glass of wine and relax.
But what’s that you’re drinking? Something you grabbed quickly on the walk home from the train? A bottle you recognized by label at a store that happens to be on your homeward commute?
It’s OK—we used to do it, too. But we think you deserve better, and that’s why we created Upper Glass. By teaming up with Boston's top sommeliers, we bring you higher-quality, more interesting wines for about the same price as those ordinary bottles, and we deliver them right to you.
Grab a corkscrew. It’s time for an upgrade.
How We Do It
Partnering with wine experts at Boston’s most beloved restaurants, Upper Glass identifies unique and interesting wines that taste like they should cost more. When we find them, we buy them in bulk on your behalf, and deliver them straight to your home or office.
Why restaurants? Put simply, quality and value. Sommeliers and wine directors put loads of thought and energy into tasting new wines, finding underrated bottles, and making unique selections for their lists. They’re experts in balancing character, value, and seasonality. But busy folks like us don’t get to sit at their tables and sip their selections quite as often as we used to.
We thought, Why not have these pros pick a few bottles people can enjoy at home, for the prices we’re already paying for humdrum wine? It’s a win-win.
What You Get
We guide our curators to pick wines that offer great quality and character for the price. Selections skew toward small producers, and are accompanied by notes about what the curator found interesting about each bottle and winery. Some selections may be uncommon or obscure, but if you fall in love with any of them, they’re available to purchase again from Upper Glass and in (some) specialty wine stores—no private labels.
About the Wines
Though we don't have a codified selection criteria, our wine picks tend to share some things in common. First—they're always artisan wines made by people, not factories. Second, they're authentic—they taste like where they're from. And often, they're from off the beaten path. Highly sought-after regions and growers may offer exceptional wines, but are rarely a great value. So we wander a little further down the road past the world-renowned vineyard, and we try the neighbor's wines instead. Finally, we like to try wines made from uncommon grapes, especially native grapes of under-appreciated wine regions that have generations-old winemaking heritage. While it's not a requirement of our selection process, we find that most of our winemakers tend to employ some level of natural, organic, and/or biodynamic winemaking practices. This is a result of our selecting authentic wines from artisan winemakers who care deeply about the vineyards and the product. In some cases they have achieved special certifications; in others, they've just been growing grapes the same way for hundreds of years and they've simply never changed. First and foremost, the wine has to be exceptional.
