Many restaurants tend to focus on menu and décor decisions and erroneously assume that wine service is something that sorts itself out. 

I actually separate restaurants into two categories: those that sell wine and those that have a wine program. 

Selling wine is looking at it as simply a profit center. A wine list is thoughtlessly put together and then ownership sits back and counts the money. As we will explore shortly, selling wine in restaurants is big business and the consumer’s interests are often not well served. 

A wine program is a process that quality restaurants focus on with the same planning and emphasis that the kitchen and dining room receive. 

One doesn’t have to be a Michelin star restaurant in order to execute a good wine program. The chain restaurant Olive Garden has an excellent one in place as a matter of fact.

So what is a wine program? 

A philosophy is established as to what wines and what price points are featured on the list. 

The “house” wines, i.e. wine by the glass selections are chosen based on getting the best quality wines and charging fair prices. 

For both the list and the house wines, someone is personally responsible for tasting wines and making buy decisions based on the standards established by the restaurant. 

Most of the wine choices compliment the food on the menu. 

Decisions about glassware are not taken lightly. The glassware should reflect the quality and pricing of the wine list. Even issues such as breakage should be secondary to the standards set forth by the wine program. 

The wait staff is trained on a regular basis. They learn proper wine service as well as taste as many of the wines as possible. Ideally the chef and cuisine is integrated into this training. 

Policies that are quality driven and pro-customer are established. These policies include how to handle situations when a bottle is rejected, corkage fees if any, mark-ups on the wine, time limit on keeping an opened bottle behind the bar and many other details.

In general, there is organized respect for the wine, the service and the consumer. 

I always order wine by the glass and frequently it isn’t as good as the wine I buy from my neighborhood shop.

When the house wine is disappointing, there are generally two reasons for this. 

1) Cheap wine.

2) Bottles that were opened long before you walked through the door.

Actually, it could be three things: a cheap wine that was opened four days ago.  

Let’s break down the house wine deal. 

A restaurant generally charges its bottle price for a glass of house wine. The restaurant pays $8.00 for the bottle and you are charged $8.00 for a glass.  

A bottle holds a touch over 26 ounces. A high quality restaurant will pour six ounces, which yields four glasses per bottle. A volume-oriented restaurant will pour five ounces and squeeze that extra glass into the profit picture. 

Most house wines cost the restaurant $7.00 to $12.00 a bottle. (Pinot Grigio a little less, Pinot Noir a little more.)  In our store experience, those price points can buy hundreds of excellent wines for that per bottle price range.  

A restaurant with a wine program holds house wine “auditions.” They will tell their distributors they need a full-bodied Cabernet Sauvignon that sells for $8.00. The salespersons bring in numerous sample bottles.  The decision maker may taste ten or more before a choice is made. You the consumer benefit from such a process.  

A restaurant that just sells wine is not so inclined to devoting a lot of effort to the selection process. A wine distributor may contact the buyer and say: “Hey, I got this great Chilean Cabernet on special this month. It’s six bucks a bottle on five cases and its awesome.” O.K. the buyer says: “Send it.” 

Now, in all probability, that $6.00 cab is thin, green and not very pleasant. It’s not on sale per se, -- it is actually a priority wine that every salesperson working for this distributor must push that month. If the restaurant is Italian, French or Portuguese, it doesn’t matter to the wine salesperson, he or she is told move cases and that’s what it’s all about… moving cases. Now of course you the customer will come in and pay $8.00 (owner will never lower the per-glass price) and have a less than satisfying wine.

The above example involves a legitimate distributor. Let me tell you there are dozens of what we call “out of the trunk” distributors out there. There have no temperature control trucks or warehouses. They will walk in and make illegal deals such as: buy five cases and get one free. If the restaurant is just selling wine, then deals like this happen. “Is it good?” asks the owner. “Yeah, it’s good.” Replies the bottom feeder. “Send it! 

Do open bottles have a “use by_____” date? 

Every Friday and Saturday, our store has wine tastings. Generally speaking we open the bottles up at around four o’clock on Friday and re-cork them for Saturday. The first thing I do on Saturday is taste the opened wines and make sure they are showing as well as they did the night before. On occasion, I decide to dump the wine and open a fresh bottle for Saturday. That is, in miniature, what every restaurant needs to do on a daily basis with their house wines. 

Once a bottle of wine is opened, the clock starts ticking. I recommend to our customers that an opened bottle should last up to three days, but on that third day, it may not be as bright as it was on day one. 

Always ask for a small pour to test the house wine in advance. If something seems off, or even flat, ask them when the bottle was opened. (Remember to bring a lie detector.) If it seems to be a shelf life situation, request a fresh bottle. If the wine is still unpleasant, it may be because they buy wine based on price and not quality. Then you rightly ask yourself, what corners did they cut in the kitchen? 

I paid $60.00 for a bottle of wine and all I got was this lousy wine glass.

In another life, I sold wine glasses to restaurants. Oh the stories I could tell… 

Well what the hell, I‘ll tell you one. 

I was in New Orleans for a restaurant trade show and dined at one of the Brennan’s restaurants. I had a great meal and they had an excellent wine list, but their glassware was atrocious.  So bad it was hard to appreciate the wine I purchased. The very next day, while I was manning my glassware company’s booth, the Brennan family member that owned the restaurant I had just dined at stopped by. I described my customer experience and very politely pointed to a $5.00 glass that I thought he should use when a $100.00 bottle of wine is ordered.  His reply: “How many more $100.00 bottles do you think I can sell if I used this expensive glass? – I’ll tell you right now: none!”

So here was a restaurant where the average check is $100.00 and most of its wines are priced above $50.00 not really caring about how their wines are served to their patrons. 

On the other extreme, there’s Trotter’s in Chicago. The chef owner Charlie Trotter made the decision to use Riedel’s hand-made Sommelier series wine glasses for his wine list wines. The Sommelier series are $100.00 a glass retail, and even if he is paying $50.00 a stem, that is one major expense. Trotter estimates approximately $5,000.00 a year in breakage, but he makes the investment because the goals of his restaurant are to exceed his customer’s expectations. 

The china is Villeroy and Boch, the flatware is Sambonet and the wine glass is… Libbey…. Yeah right, that’s the formula. 

The next time you are at a greasy spoon diner, take time to notice the flatware they use. It is generally thin and basic. No white tablecloth restaurant would, even for a second, consider using such a low quality product. Yet, that restaurant may serve wine in the very same glass the diner uses for its wine. 

A quality wine glass is essential to good wine service. Glassware is a highly competitive industry and there are many great ones for $3.50 to $5.00 a stem and this is a range that should be more than covered by standard wine list mark-ups.  

Restaurants worry about costs. In this case, purchase price as well as breakage / replacement costs. The temptation to use durable (translate to thick-wall, thick stemmed) cheap glasses is like bubblegum to a kid to them.

Glassware awareness is an important part of wine appreciation and fine dining. It is something you touch with your hands and bring to your lips. A proper wineglass, with a smooth stem, thin rim and generous, crystal clear bowl enhances the tasting experience. 

A very good basic wineglass should be used for house wines and a high quality glass should be served with wines sold by the bottle.

I ordered Premier Cru White Burgundy and I think it’s really good, but it’s ice cold so I can’t say for sure.

As a general rule, whites are served too cold and reds too warm. The white you ordered may come to you overly chilled and what does the server automatically do? Yep – he or she will plunge it into an ice bucket. Just say no. It’s perfectly fine to request that the white wine be placed on the table.   

Rare, but there may be a time when a red needs a little plunge in ice for a short time. 

I ordered a 2002 Cabernet and they brought me a 2003.

-- Hey you’re lucky, they didn’t even have the wine I ordered.

You just caught the restaurant sleeping on the job. Updating the wine list is an important responsibility. Vintage changes as well as inventory management necessitate diligence on the restaurant’s part. In the old days, when menus and wine lists were done at a print shop, one could be a little more forgiving. But in today’s computer oriented business world, it only takes a few strokes to make the list current and accurate

I recently dined at a restaurant where my first three wine selections were no longer in inventory. This is inexcusable.

Vintages may or may not be an important for you. If you ordered a certain vintage and the server arrives with another one, please feel free to express your disappointment and refuse it.

On the other hand, keep in mind that a great winery generally never makes a wine that is not worthy of our attention. 

Are all wine lists created equal?

Sadly no. It is more common than you would guess that some restaurant owners turn to wine salespersons to create their lists. Talk about foxes guarding henhouses! Bad wine lists have lots of national brands (wine salesperson’s priorities) and no focus or regard to food matching.

I have composed many wine lists and it is a time consuming task. I have frequently observed that when owners take shortcuts with their wine lists, they also take shortcuts in their kitchens. On the other hand, those that take the time to create an excellent list are quality driven in every segment of their operation.

The restaurant in my town received an award from Wine Spectator magazine – It’s nicely framed on their entrance hallway wall – so they must have a stellar wine list… right?

Probably yes. But it’s no guarantee.  The Wine Spectator “invites” restaurants to submit their lists to the magazine. The magazine has certain criteria for each level of award it bestows. For example: over 100 wines with international representation.

But guess what? The magazine charges an entry fee (no small amount) and the lists are not verified by the staff for every award level except the highest.  

Let’s assume I was a dishonest restaurateur, (as in the Mel Brooks movie The Producers – assume away!) and I sat down and copied and pasted from other wine lists published on web sites and put it all on my letterhead. I then fill out a few forms, swear I’m telling the truth, mail it in with a couple of c-notes and… two months later: Presto I get my award. Keep in mind, I may not even have a license to sell wine (they don’t check that either) or I may sell Thunderbird by the glass… I might serve my wine in ashtrays… but hey I got an award designating excellence in wine service and you can’t take that away from me. 

I personally have been retained as a consultant by New York restaurants and developed wine lists tailored specifically for Wine Spectator Awards of Excellence. In each and every case, I have, on the first try, garnered that award for my clients. The restaurants I worked with truly deserved this recognition, they purchased every bottle on the list (spending many thousands of dollars) and they continue to take pride in their service and selection, so yes I would say that having such awards is a good sign.