A wine list is a menu

Menu

In a restaurant, a menu is a presentation of food and beverage offerings. A menu may be a la carte – which guests use to choose from a list of options – or table d'hôte, in which case a pre-established sequence of courses is served....

 of wine

Wine

Wine is an alcoholic beverage, made of fermented fruit juice, usually from grapes. The natural chemical balance of grapes lets them ferment without the addition of sugars, acids, enzymes, or other nutrients. Grape wine is produced by fermenting crushed grapes using various types of yeast. Yeast...

 selections for purchase, typically in a restaurant

Restaurant

A restaurant is an establishment which prepares and serves food and drink to customers in return for money. Meals are generally served and eaten on premises, but many restaurants also offer take-out and food delivery services...

 setting. A restaurant may include a list of available wines on its main menu, but usually provides a separate menu just for wines. Wine lists in the form of tasting menu

Tasting menu

Restaurant tasting menus offer small portions of several dishes as a single meal. Some restaurants and chefs specialize in tasting menus, while in other cases, it is a special or a menu option. Tasting menus may be offered to provide a sample of a type of cuisine, or house specialties, or to take...

s and wines for purchase are also offered by wineries

Winery

A winery is a building or property that produces wine, or a business involved in the production of wine, such as a wine company. Some wine companies own many wineries. Besides wine making equipment, larger wineries may also feature warehouses, bottling lines, laboratories, and large expanses of...

 and wine stores.

A restaurant's sommelier

Sommelier

A sommelier , or wine steward, is a trained and knowledgeable wine professional, commonly working in fine restaurants, who specializes in all aspects of wine service as well as wine and food matching...

 is usually in charge of assembling the wine list, educating the staff about wine, and assisting customers with their wine selections.

Wine lists have been found from ancient Egyptian

Egypt

Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...

 times. Ancient wine lists were not created for the same purpose served by a menu, but rather as a means of recording inventory and administrating wine rations in a monarch's household.

Organization

A wine list is typically organized into sections. A restaurant offering few selections may organize its list in two groups (red wine and white wine) whereas a larger wine list may have several sections, including any of the following:

• White wines
• Red wines
• Rosé wines
• Dessert wine
  Dessert wine
  Dessert wines are sweet wines typically served with dessert.There is no simple definition of a dessert wine. In the UK, a dessert wine is considered to be any sweet wine drunk with a meal, as opposed to the white fortified wines drunk before the meal, and the red fortified wines drunk after it...
  
  s
• Sections or subcategories by varietal
  Varietal
  "Varietal" describes wines made primarily from a single named grape variety, and which typically displays the name of that variety on the wine label. Examples of grape varieties commonly used in varietal wines are Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay and Merlot...
  
  
• Sections organized by wine-producing region or country
• Locally-produced or specialty wines

Pricing

Next to the description of each wine selection, a wine list displays the price of wine purchased by the bottle or by the glass.

A wine list may also disclose a corkage fee for patrons who bring their own wine, in establishments and countries where this is customary. The corkage fee is intended to cover the profit the restaurant would have earned had it sold the customer a wine.