George, I interviewed the lead sommelier at Spago in Las Vegas for an unrelated piece a few months ago. She told me that at the end of the day if her guests leave happy, then she's happy. Your bullet points about guest service are thoughtful. Your list of pet peeves should be shared widely. I must say though...your stock photo caption/instructions was a highlight. Cheers!
"Unless in a formal dining setting, where wine glasses are magically kept at an appropriate fill level by a skilled sommelier, please do not pour my wine for me."
Interesting! This is the first I'm ever hearing of this complaint. I have no idea how prevalent it is, but I know here in America it's essentially DEMANDED (by managers/employers) that servers pour all wine. It's not an option. You will have to tell them not to if you want that to happen, guaranteed. Certainly on the first pour (after that, you'll likely be left alone with the bottle and can do what you like.)
Hehe yeah that’s what ends up happening most of the time. Some people just won’t take a hint though… some people as you say want that, but knowing how admittedly particular I am, and how sloppy a lot of those top up pours can be I’d rather do it myself. I’ve maybe been scarred as well by bad waiters spilling wine in the process and just pretending we didn’t all just see what happened. I should go to better restaurants maybe…
Man, I'm the worst pourer - I spill at least a drop or two on the first pour of every day/night, without fail. I do clean it up, though. I don't WANT to pour the damn wine, but so it goes.
In Australian Chinese restuarants it's a big problem. They keep topping up your glasses. That's especiaally bad given one of us might be a designated driver and needs to meticulously count drinks. It's usually my wife as I can't be trusted around wine :-)
Especially loved your note that wine is often playing “supporting actor”—not star. So true. The mark of a great sommelier isn’t how much they know, but how skillfully they sense what the table needs. Sometimes it’s a breakdown of tannic structure… sometimes it’s just: “Bring something red and friendly.”
Love your pet peeves. I do not drink wine out often at all as the price markup here is stupid. Plus, I am a homebody. However- I despise when a bottle is opened at the table. Just open the wine behind scenes- how snobby and pretentious do I need to seem. And if you offer my partner the taste because he is a man- he is gonna give you a smack down. I am the worst to give any service input as I truly have wine out on vacation in Europe or a state where I can BYOB. My state is awful and the wine lists at the average and high end restaurants leave much to be desired.
#4 on your pet peeve… YES. There is a particular wine bar near me that I love that has a delightfully obscure, natural-forward Georgian and Eastern European selection that I would absolutely frequent to t drink through their list except for the fact that every time I have gone there, the same server assumes I have no knowledge of the list or what I would want to try even after I have picked out several different glasses for the table to taste. Please!! Read the room!!
My first instinct is "Am I being ripped off?".Some fancy restaurants in London have an 800% mark up on wines.Many don't have wines below £30 and reach the stratosphere very quicky.
A friend who was a successful restauranteur used to charge a flat profit of £8 a bottle on a bottle at any price.This encouraged customers to go up the wine list,enjoy the dining experience more and upped returns and recommendations.
He was very transparent about the profit and people left the restaurant in the sure knowledge of experiencing very good wines and not being ripped off.
That’s certainly true, and some places do indeed exaggerate prices more than they should. That said, there are relatively industry standard markups that are, in part, a consequence of every part of the supply chain getting their margin. It’s not necessarily the restaurant alone. If good wine is selling for say £15 per bottle from the Chateau, you’re looking at a wholesale price from the importer of closer to £28-30, which by the time it is in a nicer restaurant may add 2-3x on top of that making the wine £90-120 when it reaches your table. The multiplier will usually be lower for higher end wines. Yes, it’s a lot, but whether it’s a ripoff I suppose depends on expectations for the experience, and to the point of the article I think a good sommelier should be able to respect that (within the broader price range of the chosen restaurant).
Should add perhaps that I don’t mind a flat profit, but doubt most London land lords would allow higher end restaurants in appropriate locations rent levels that could sustain that. The food is usually, to my knowledge, at the very lower end of a restaurants profit margin.
See this is my ultimate pet peeve (and something I will definitely cover in my own post on this topic next week!) 28-30 turning into 90-120 is a 3-4x markup, not a 2-3x. And that is too damn much. I know it's industry standard, and I know the food magins are lower so they expect the wine to make up for it, but it's obscene and keeps wine from selling as much as it could, and should.
At 3-4x markup, you're moving much less wine, guaranteed. This harms everyone across the supply chain leading back to the Chateau as well. And over time, creates swathes of wine that haven't moved and aren't moving. If I eyeball a wine list, and it's plainly more than 2 or 2.5x markup, I am never, ever buying wine from that establishment, full stop.
Quite right of course, my math is of course not right. Meant h to write 3-4x. I don’t necessarily know that it does prevent wine from selling though. The places that can comfortably charge these markups in London do indeed shift wine, but I think the appetite for those restaurants in general is fading a bit. That’s just based on a cursory impression of how busy some of the restaurants around Mayfair (where I work) are.
Obviously some wine sells, the question is: how much less are we selling due to these markups? Wine sales in America are way, waaaay down. They’re down in France as well. Importers here in the States often complain that they can’t ship a new palette over because they’re still sitting on so much in a warehouse, they can’t jutify the cost. Sales to restaurants are veyr much down. The whole supply chain gets jammed in this way if shops and restaurants aren’t selling enough. And knowing that we’re also going through cost-of-living crises and wages that have not caught up with inflation, that leave a small slice of the population to support a massive industry. And based on how much incredible wine continues to show up on “Deal of the Day” sites, plainly not enough is selling.
Absolutely agree. Though it makes you wonder whether it would be better to lower some of the barriers, particularly in the US, that prevent producers from selling direct to consumer. I know there’s a lot of work going towards that, but for the majority of states it’s just not an option. It doesn’t necessarily solve the restaurant issue, but if you could reduce the need for a middleman, you might be able to offer consumers more reasonable wine while ensuring producers get enough margin to keep quality as high as we want it.
I can relate to all your pet peeves, think I've been the victim of most of them multiple times.
I particularly love it when a somm explains what orange wine is to me. I just sit quietly and nod, before pointedly ordering something completely different to what they recommended.
Last year, I went to a good pizza restaurant with a friend of mine who runs a wine shop. The wine choice was terrible but we settled on a bottle of Aglianico that we thought might be halfway drinkable. It was sat on the counter top and clearly far too warm, so we asked for an ice bucket.
The young female waitress gladly provided the ice and opened the wine. It was pretty terrible, but at least we were able to get it down to a decent drinking temperature (ie: 16C instead of the 28-30C it was probably at when the bottle was brought to our table).
Ten or twenty minutes later, the head somm, a young and snappily dressed Italian man swanned into the room. He came over to our table, looked sniffilly at the ice bucket and said "Just to let you know, this is not how we usually serve red wine. It is not meant to be chilled."
Haha that’s pretty shocking actually! Trying to think how I’d respond to that but suspect I’d be too taken off guard by such a bizarre comment to properly process what happened in real time.
It was a quite extraordinary case of not only not reading the room but also digging a hole and jumping into it when there was absolutely no need to do so!
Even not knowning the context of the situation, there are so many red wines that are wonderful with at least a slight chill on them (I often keep open bottled in my fridge overnight, then at least take a sip fresh out of the fridge to see what it's like - you never know!) But he could have easily asked the waitress "Did they ask for that?" and she would have said "yes" and that's where any good somm would let it be.
On the topic of Orange wine, it's definitely less known or experienced here in the States than in Europe, I suspect, and often there's a need to "feel out the room" vs. "reading the room", because often the guests aren't giving any obvious hints up front. If someone orders an orange wine and you are, for whaatever reason, concerned they might not know what it is (maybe a previous guest had just been disappointed by one and now you think you need to check) you can alway ask something like "Good choice! On a scale of 1-10 how big a fan of orange wine would you say you are?" or "I love tha wine. Have you ever had an orange wine made from [insert grape]?" Something short and conversational that pulls out the necessary context you're fishing for without asking it outright, and also let's the guests tell you a little about themselves, which often is a positive thing. Though your mileage may vary.
George, I interviewed the lead sommelier at Spago in Las Vegas for an unrelated piece a few months ago. She told me that at the end of the day if her guests leave happy, then she's happy. Your bullet points about guest service are thoughtful. Your list of pet peeves should be shared widely. I must say though...your stock photo caption/instructions was a highlight. Cheers!
"Unless in a formal dining setting, where wine glasses are magically kept at an appropriate fill level by a skilled sommelier, please do not pour my wine for me."
Interesting! This is the first I'm ever hearing of this complaint. I have no idea how prevalent it is, but I know here in America it's essentially DEMANDED (by managers/employers) that servers pour all wine. It's not an option. You will have to tell them not to if you want that to happen, guaranteed. Certainly on the first pour (after that, you'll likely be left alone with the bottle and can do what you like.)
Hehe yeah that’s what ends up happening most of the time. Some people just won’t take a hint though… some people as you say want that, but knowing how admittedly particular I am, and how sloppy a lot of those top up pours can be I’d rather do it myself. I’ve maybe been scarred as well by bad waiters spilling wine in the process and just pretending we didn’t all just see what happened. I should go to better restaurants maybe…
Man, I'm the worst pourer - I spill at least a drop or two on the first pour of every day/night, without fail. I do clean it up, though. I don't WANT to pour the damn wine, but so it goes.
In Australian Chinese restuarants it's a big problem. They keep topping up your glasses. That's especiaally bad given one of us might be a designated driver and needs to meticulously count drinks. It's usually my wife as I can't be trusted around wine :-)
Especially loved your note that wine is often playing “supporting actor”—not star. So true. The mark of a great sommelier isn’t how much they know, but how skillfully they sense what the table needs. Sometimes it’s a breakdown of tannic structure… sometimes it’s just: “Bring something red and friendly.”
Love your pet peeves. I do not drink wine out often at all as the price markup here is stupid. Plus, I am a homebody. However- I despise when a bottle is opened at the table. Just open the wine behind scenes- how snobby and pretentious do I need to seem. And if you offer my partner the taste because he is a man- he is gonna give you a smack down. I am the worst to give any service input as I truly have wine out on vacation in Europe or a state where I can BYOB. My state is awful and the wine lists at the average and high end restaurants leave much to be desired.
#4 on your pet peeve… YES. There is a particular wine bar near me that I love that has a delightfully obscure, natural-forward Georgian and Eastern European selection that I would absolutely frequent to t drink through their list except for the fact that every time I have gone there, the same server assumes I have no knowledge of the list or what I would want to try even after I have picked out several different glasses for the table to taste. Please!! Read the room!!
My first instinct is "Am I being ripped off?".Some fancy restaurants in London have an 800% mark up on wines.Many don't have wines below £30 and reach the stratosphere very quicky.
A friend who was a successful restauranteur used to charge a flat profit of £8 a bottle on a bottle at any price.This encouraged customers to go up the wine list,enjoy the dining experience more and upped returns and recommendations.
He was very transparent about the profit and people left the restaurant in the sure knowledge of experiencing very good wines and not being ripped off.
That’s certainly true, and some places do indeed exaggerate prices more than they should. That said, there are relatively industry standard markups that are, in part, a consequence of every part of the supply chain getting their margin. It’s not necessarily the restaurant alone. If good wine is selling for say £15 per bottle from the Chateau, you’re looking at a wholesale price from the importer of closer to £28-30, which by the time it is in a nicer restaurant may add 2-3x on top of that making the wine £90-120 when it reaches your table. The multiplier will usually be lower for higher end wines. Yes, it’s a lot, but whether it’s a ripoff I suppose depends on expectations for the experience, and to the point of the article I think a good sommelier should be able to respect that (within the broader price range of the chosen restaurant).
Should add perhaps that I don’t mind a flat profit, but doubt most London land lords would allow higher end restaurants in appropriate locations rent levels that could sustain that. The food is usually, to my knowledge, at the very lower end of a restaurants profit margin.
See this is my ultimate pet peeve (and something I will definitely cover in my own post on this topic next week!) 28-30 turning into 90-120 is a 3-4x markup, not a 2-3x. And that is too damn much. I know it's industry standard, and I know the food magins are lower so they expect the wine to make up for it, but it's obscene and keeps wine from selling as much as it could, and should.
At 3-4x markup, you're moving much less wine, guaranteed. This harms everyone across the supply chain leading back to the Chateau as well. And over time, creates swathes of wine that haven't moved and aren't moving. If I eyeball a wine list, and it's plainly more than 2 or 2.5x markup, I am never, ever buying wine from that establishment, full stop.
Quite right of course, my math is of course not right. Meant h to write 3-4x. I don’t necessarily know that it does prevent wine from selling though. The places that can comfortably charge these markups in London do indeed shift wine, but I think the appetite for those restaurants in general is fading a bit. That’s just based on a cursory impression of how busy some of the restaurants around Mayfair (where I work) are.
Obviously some wine sells, the question is: how much less are we selling due to these markups? Wine sales in America are way, waaaay down. They’re down in France as well. Importers here in the States often complain that they can’t ship a new palette over because they’re still sitting on so much in a warehouse, they can’t jutify the cost. Sales to restaurants are veyr much down. The whole supply chain gets jammed in this way if shops and restaurants aren’t selling enough. And knowing that we’re also going through cost-of-living crises and wages that have not caught up with inflation, that leave a small slice of the population to support a massive industry. And based on how much incredible wine continues to show up on “Deal of the Day” sites, plainly not enough is selling.
Absolutely agree. Though it makes you wonder whether it would be better to lower some of the barriers, particularly in the US, that prevent producers from selling direct to consumer. I know there’s a lot of work going towards that, but for the majority of states it’s just not an option. It doesn’t necessarily solve the restaurant issue, but if you could reduce the need for a middleman, you might be able to offer consumers more reasonable wine while ensuring producers get enough margin to keep quality as high as we want it.
I can relate to all your pet peeves, think I've been the victim of most of them multiple times.
I particularly love it when a somm explains what orange wine is to me. I just sit quietly and nod, before pointedly ordering something completely different to what they recommended.
Last year, I went to a good pizza restaurant with a friend of mine who runs a wine shop. The wine choice was terrible but we settled on a bottle of Aglianico that we thought might be halfway drinkable. It was sat on the counter top and clearly far too warm, so we asked for an ice bucket.
The young female waitress gladly provided the ice and opened the wine. It was pretty terrible, but at least we were able to get it down to a decent drinking temperature (ie: 16C instead of the 28-30C it was probably at when the bottle was brought to our table).
Ten or twenty minutes later, the head somm, a young and snappily dressed Italian man swanned into the room. He came over to our table, looked sniffilly at the ice bucket and said "Just to let you know, this is not how we usually serve red wine. It is not meant to be chilled."
We looked at each other, trying not to gag.
We said nothing.
Haha that’s pretty shocking actually! Trying to think how I’d respond to that but suspect I’d be too taken off guard by such a bizarre comment to properly process what happened in real time.
It was a quite extraordinary case of not only not reading the room but also digging a hole and jumping into it when there was absolutely no need to do so!
Even not knowning the context of the situation, there are so many red wines that are wonderful with at least a slight chill on them (I often keep open bottled in my fridge overnight, then at least take a sip fresh out of the fridge to see what it's like - you never know!) But he could have easily asked the waitress "Did they ask for that?" and she would have said "yes" and that's where any good somm would let it be.
On the topic of Orange wine, it's definitely less known or experienced here in the States than in Europe, I suspect, and often there's a need to "feel out the room" vs. "reading the room", because often the guests aren't giving any obvious hints up front. If someone orders an orange wine and you are, for whaatever reason, concerned they might not know what it is (maybe a previous guest had just been disappointed by one and now you think you need to check) you can alway ask something like "Good choice! On a scale of 1-10 how big a fan of orange wine would you say you are?" or "I love tha wine. Have you ever had an orange wine made from [insert grape]?" Something short and conversational that pulls out the necessary context you're fishing for without asking it outright, and also let's the guests tell you a little about themselves, which often is a positive thing. Though your mileage may vary.