Data Sources

The Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau publishes the list of Federal Alcohol Administration Act permit holders via FOIA. This is the backbone of our US winery directory — names, addresses, permit numbers, and permit types for every licensed wine producer in the United States.

• License: Public domain (US government work). Freely storable, redistributable.
• Format: CSV + JSON, updated weekly.
• Storage: Full record stored permanently. Updated on weekly refresh cycle.
• Coverage: ~11,000+ US wine producers with FAA permits.
• Caveat: Bonded wine cellars without FAA permits are withheld under IRC §6103. The permittee-entered COUNTY field is often inaccurate.

We query OpenStreetMap for craft=winery, shop=wine, and relevant tourism=* tags. This provides global coverage with names, websites, addresses, coordinates, and opening hours.

• License: Open Database License (ODbL). Storable with attribution and share-alike.
• Attribution: © OpenStreetMap contributors. Displayed site-wide.
• Storage: Name, address, coordinates, website, hours. Updated monthly.
• Coverage: ~25,000+ wineries globally (variable by region).

Wineries, appellations, wine regions, and geographic hierarchy via SPARQL. Provides coordinates, official websites, parent regions, and classification data.

• License: CC0 (public domain). Freely storable without attribution, though we attribute anyway.
• Storage: Full entity data stored. Coordinates, websites, region hierarchy.
• Coverage: ~15,000+ winery entities + all wine appellations globally.

The EU's register of geographical indications. Provides the official wine appellation hierarchy (PDO/PGI) for all EU member states. Used for our geographic hierarchy and region boundary mapping — not for individual business listings.

• License: EU open data (reuse permitted with attribution).
• Boundary data: EU_PDO.gpkg inventory (~1,177 PDO boundaries) for polygon mapping.
• Storage: Appellation names, hierarchy, boundary polygons stored.

State Alcohol Beverage Control agencies maintain their own license databases. These fill gaps left by TTB — particularly small wineries operating under state-only permits.

Key states: California ABC, New York SLA, Oregon OLCC, Washington LCB, Texas TABC, Virginia ABC. Formats vary (CSV, PDF, online lookup).

We display three types of images, clearly distinguished:

• Real photos: Sourced from Wikimedia Commons (CC-licensed, stored with attribution), winery official websites (linked, not rehosted without permission), and user uploads.
• Placeholder: A randomized grape/vineyard image from storable licensed sets. Used when no sourced photo exists.
• Available by API: Distinct placeholder indicating the photo exists behind a paid API (Google Places, Yelp). Shows what free data we have + which API would unlock the rest.

These sources exist behind paywalls. We catalog them here for future purchase approval:

• Google Places (New): Hours, photos, reviews, ratings. Storable: place_id only. All else live-fetch. $17/1000 requests.
• Yelp Fusion: Reviews, photos, ratings. Storable: nothing beyond 24h. Live widget only. Free tier 5,000 calls/day.
• Wine-Searcher Pro: Pricing, availability, vintage data. ~$600/yr. Global wine pricing database.
• Vivino commercial: Ratings, tasting notes. Commercial license required. Global wine rating corpus.

US AVA boundaries from TTB/UC Davis AVA GeoJSON (public domain). EU PDO/PGI polygons from the EU_PDO.gpkg inventory. Used for point-in-polygon winery-to-appellation resolution and map region browsing.