July 2010 Editorial
Restaurant wines and the BYO revolution, by Tim Atkin MW
If you're a paid up member of The Wine Gang, there's more than a chance that you're interested in food as well as fermented grape juice. It's just about possible that some of you are happy
to drink a bottle of good wine with nothing more exciting than a take away pizza or a cook chill meal, but somehow I doubt it. Most wine lovers care passionately about what they put in their mouths.
I also wouldn't mind betting that most of you enjoy eating out in restaurants: the food, the wine, the conviviality, the sense of occasion. Not many of us can afford to do so every night of the week,
even at the value for money end of the spectrum, but restaurants are an enormous source of enjoyment to most winos.
The only thing that diminishes our pleasure is mark ups on wine, which generally inflate the retail price by a factor of three or more. The UK isn't alone in this - try finding a reasonable bottle
of wine in Manhattan or Tokyo - but wine drinkers in these islands seem to suffer more than most.
It's well known in wine circles that we cork dorks subsidise the meals of other diners. Talk to most restaurateurs and they'll admit that the mark ups on wine are generally much higher
than those on food. This means that the more (and the better) we drink, the more we are contributing to the restaurant's bottom line. And then there's the flat 12.5% service charge to pay on top.
Order a bottle at £100, and it's £12.50; order one at £30 and it's £3.75. Same waiter, same glass, same restaurant.
Why don't people make more fuss about this? Even if you accept that restaurants are businesses that have to pay rent, employ staff, wash table cloths, pull corks, buy food and polish glasses, it
seems unfair on wine drinkers. Restaurant critics, who are generally more interested in the food, the chef, the décor and their own preoccupations than they are in wine, rarely mention it.
No wonder so many of us seek out restaurants that don't have licences, or which allow us to bring a bottle of our own wine. You'll probably have your own favourites already, but Gang member Tom
Cannavan's
www.wine-pages.com has a list of more than 400 BYO restaurants. Many of these are free, although some charge a modest corkage fee.
What does modest mean? I think it's perfectly fair of a licensed restaurant to charge the equivalent of the price of its cheapest wine, which means anything between £15 and £25,
depending on the ambition and quality of the establishment. In my experience, many will waive the fee altogether if you buy something else from the list and allow the staff to sample your special bottle.
Another alternative is to join the recently formed
BYO Wine Club, which charges members an annual fee of £99 and negotiates deals with restaurants on their behalf.
The list of partners is modest for now (around 50), but is growing all the time. Make sure you read the small print before you go out, because the terms and conditions vary from restaurant to
restaurant. But if you eat out more than once a month, the club looks like a good idea.
We wine lovers are fair people. We accept that restaurateurs have to make money. We also accept that if everyone took their own wine to restaurants, eateries wouldn't stay in business for long.
But surely it's time for a more flexible approach. If restaurants want our custom, it's time they gave us a little something in return.
Our roving bunch of five category this month is 'Wines to drown your World Cup sorrows'.
top scoring wine for July 2010
Our top scorer this month is an exquisite Eiswein from a top German Estate, but we also found a 93-point wine for under £15.
Robert Weil Kiedrich Gräfenberg Eiswein 2009
Viscous, intense, luscious mix of rich honey and crystallised stone fruits and citrus, this wine, of which only 300 litres were made, is unbelievably richly concentrated and mouthwatering, almost eyewatering too, with an exotic, mango and peach fruit richness and a smoky intensity that almost defies description. Half-bottle.
£135.00, Howard Ripley. Find on
wine-searcher.com
Viña Leyda Cahuil Pinot Noir 2008
Wonderfully expressive Pinot from the Pacific-cooled Leyda Valley. Aromatic, immaculately pure cherry, strawberry and raspberry fruit fleshed out with the nutty flavour of fine French oak and freshened by crisp acidity. £14.99, Waitrose.
Find on
wine-searcher.com
