What are Unicorn Wines?

Perhaps you’ve seen the hashtag #UnicornWine floating around twitter. Or maybe you’re just totally curious why in the world they’d name a wine after a mythical creature! Turns out the title is appropriate because it refers to any wine that is hard to find.

You’ll most often see sommeliers using this term, usually with a photo of said Unicorn Wine as their bragging rights that they got a hold of a bottle of the elusive wine. According to the Wine Spectator, a few criteria for determining a true Unicorn Wine are:

• The wine must have a production of fewer than 200 cases.

• You feel genuinely uncomfortable when opening because it may never happen again.

• The winemaker is no longer with us or retired.

• If you have to ask, it ain’t Unicorn.

So chances are, unless it’s one of your goals in life, you won’t run across one of these rare finds. But at least now you’ll now how special it really is when you see someone post that they’re drinking a #UnicornWine!

If you want to do more reading, here’s a list that Eater made of some well known Unicorn Wines.