Crowd-sourced ratings are becoming pervasive in the wine industry with 100M+ 5-star reviews accessible online. An online exercise simulating the retail environment collected data from 21,636 wine “purchases” from 1202 participants. Using discrete choice modeling and regression analysis, this study investigated the influence of crowd-sourced ratings relative to rating-volume, shopper demographics, and wine attributes. Results show that crowd-sourced ratings influence wine purchasing decisions for all wine categories, although to varying degrees, and even surpass the influence of professional ratings with sufficient rating-volume. Younger generations with middle to high incomes, greater wine knowledge, who purchased wine at higher-than-average volumes and prices were generally more likely to be influenced by crowd-sourced ratings. The relative influence of the rating is correlated to a combination of familiarity of the wine variety/origin, price, and the manner in which wines are arranged on a shelf (i.e. mixed vs pre-sorted shelving). The quantitative findings open powerful possibilities for new marketing strategies for retailers, producers, distributors, and restaurants/bars.