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Written by Jonathon Alsop
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Thursday, 07 February 2008 12:25 |
Every single time, the giant challenge of ordering wine in a restaurant and navigating an incomprehensible wine list comes up, often many more times than once. People report confusion, intimidation, and worst of all, a nagging certainty that the same $37 bottle of wine they’re about to order is sitting in the 2-for-$12 bin at their local wine shop.
Charmingly, most wine lovers actually blame themselves for their discombobulation. If only I knew more about wine, they think, or could speak the secret language of the sommelier, then I could get a good glass of wine every time. Consumer education is important, but frankly, I blame us, the people in the wine and food industry. Restaurant management seems to focus more on the etiquette of serving wine than on the practical aspects of selling it. Self-styled wine masters hide wine’s inherent subjectivity behind a veil of experthood and gibberish. And servers - often just as confused and intimidated as their customers - recommend the same safe wines over and over.
The irony in all this is that the beverage side of the food and beverage industry is where the real money is. Restaurants that don’t rock the wine list are just kissing revenue good-bye. The good news is that we can fix this. Here’s a short list of things I’d like to see every restaurant in America do to pick up their wine game.
More copies of the wine list.
Imagine handing a party of eight only one food menu to share. Utterly ridiculous, right? They’d pass the menu back and forth for a few clumsy minutes until they just gave up and appointed someone to order for the whole crew. There’s no way people could have a successful dining experience under those circumstances. But this is exactly the equivalent of what happens when a server delivers one copy of the wine list per party. Don’t get me started about the improper habit of delivering it by default to the oldest man at the table. From now on, wine lists for everybody!
More wine training for servers and cooks.
I have stopped counting the number of times restaurant owners and managers have said, “Why should I spend money training my people about wine? Turnover’s so high, I’d just be training my competition!” This would be like hiring dishwashers and not showing them how to use the dishwasher because they might someday go wash dishes somewhere else. Every person in the front of the house and the kitchen needs to know the wine list inside and out. That means tasting, talking, and thinking about wine all the time. When salespeople from importers and distributors show up, make sure everyone present tastes the wines, not just the beverage manager. Schedule regular, mandatory wine training. The result is that chefs will design dishes and specials with wines in mind and servers can go out and confidently sell both. Also, if servers are selling more wine, everyone’s making more money, and maybe staff turnover won’t be so high.
Streamline the wine list.
Most wine lists are just too damn long. Sure, everyone’s impressed by the heft and genius of Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, but would you really like to try and read it in front of your dinner guests in 10 minutes? I’d like to see restaurants take a “less is more” approach. Focus on a dozen whites, a dozen reds, and a half-dozen rosés on one page. Put everything else in a leather-bound reserve list.
List wine on the food menu.
Don’t make people guess what wine goes with what food: put it right on the menu in black and white! Some of the most successful wine lists I’ve ever seen are literally integrated into the food menu. Seafood dishes are in the left column and seafood wines are listed to the right, then red meat dishes with red meat wines, desserts with dessert wines, and so on. This approach makes wine pairing simple, and it reinforces the idea that food and wine go together.
Read the table for wine.
When a customer asks about a challenging or exotic dish - “What’s that soft shell crab or steak tartare like?” for instance - the natural thing for a responsible server to try to find out is what the person who’s asking the question is like. Soft shell crab is fantastic and steak tartare is amazing… for the food and wine adventurer. If you aren’t in the mood for an adventure, neither of those is a good choice, amazing or not. When a customer points to a wine on the wine list and asks, “What’s this wine like?” the best response is “It’s delicious, of course, but what are you like?” With that, a conversation is underway, and you’re selling wine, not just serving it.
Jonathon Alsop is the founder and executive director of the Boston Wine School. He has been writing about wine, food, and travel since 1988. You can contact him at
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Wine, Beer & Spirits 
