Let's Agree to Broaden Our Wine Horizons in 2025

I RARELY MAKE New Year's resolutions, but when I do they are almost always wine related.

My record is reasonably good; I'm pretty sure I've kept more pledges than I've abandoned. For example, I pledged to drink more German Riesling in 2013, and since then I have made good on that promise, year after year, and even visited Germany a few times.

Below are the five wine resolutions I am publicly vowing to keep in 2025. If at any point over the course of the next year you suspect I've failed to uphold any of these pledges, feel free to drop me a (chastising) line. Or, better yet, send me a few of your own wine resolutions, and perhaps I'll commit to them along with you.

1 Focus more on overlooked wines, producers and regions.

It's all too easy to pay attention to the big names and famous places. Cabernets from Napa and Sonoma are far easier to find on wine lists and store shelves than, say, Cabernet from the Margaret River in Australia or Walla Walla, Wash., though both of the latter,less-well-known places produce stellar examples of the grape.

I vow to look for Cabernets from such less-heralded places-and, for that matter, any grape that's mostly associated with a particular country or region, but actually handled very well in other parts of the world. For example, instead of drinking Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand-the only country that some people associate with that grape-I'll search for Sauvignon Blanc from Styria, Austria. The Sauvignon Blancs from this region (aka Steiermark) are much more mineral and more saline than the typical overtly grassy and/ or herbaceous Kiwi wine. I recently tried a bottle of Tement Kalk & Kreide Sauvignon Blanc ($22) from southern Styria, and it was terrific.