Sometimes, it’s really hard to winnow down all the material to create a concise story. Take today’s piece on restaurant wine lists (or don’t). Not only could I have done a series on various aspects of the topic, but the handful of people I talked to had some interesting thoughts that just couldn’t make the cut.

Now that’s probably not why God invented blogs, but here are some noteworthy quotes (in terms of the person, venue or just wine in general)  that didn’t quite fit, either for space or relevance reasons:

Victoria Norvell-Levy, wine manager at Lucia’s: “I try to meet with the day and night staffs once a week, to talk about working with that week’s list. Like, if there’s someone looking for pinot grigio, we have this amazing white from Sicily with the same same flavor profile. And if they’re scared, give them a taste. … We really try to stay in the same framework we use with the farms for our distributors — the smaller guys, who are really thoughtful about customer service.”

Wines: “I have to have a malbec on my list. … And the pinot craze, I can’t keep up with it. I’ve been really really pleased with what I’ve seen out of Willamette Valley [in Oregon] this year.

Daniel Springros, general manager at 112 Eatery: “We’re trying to do more half-bottles … but it takes a certain kind of customer to want to spend that much, on a white wine in particular.”

Wines: “The Vietti Tre Vigne Barbera d’Alba sells really well, and the Domaine La Garrigue Vacqueyras moves well such a great value and also pretty food friendly …. I’m trying to broaden things; I’ve brought in an Austrian Riesling, Savennieres, wines with stony characteristics.”

Erin Ungerman, co-owner and wine manager at El Meson and Cafe Ena: “I like to go with the lesser-known brands. I told one distributor, ‘Clearly you don’t know me because I don’t give a flying whatever about name recognition on my list.’ … I’m always learning myself and feeling out my customers, talking with them. We have a lot of people bring in wines, and I’m always watching what they are bringing.”

Wines: “We’ve had good luck with white Cotes du Rhones. If you would have told me that when we opened, I would have said you were going out of your mind … And we always have a vinho verde on the list.”   

Jeff Mitchell, corporate beverage director for D’Amico Partners, Inc.: “At D’Amico Cucina, they’ve been purchasing wines for 20 years, so things that didn’t used to have name recognition, they were purchasing years ago when the prices were more agreeable. The newer vintages are priced higher because there’s less supply and more demand. So the older wines on their list are fairly affordable for what you’re getting.”

Wines: “At Café Lurcat we really like having strong Burgundian list. And nowadays, the real values in pinot noir are in Burgundy and Oregon, not California, where you’re paying for all those people who are uprooting merlot vines to plant new pinot noir vines.”

Charles Lodge, owner of Chiang Mai Thai: “I’ve seen operators mark up a bottle 3 or 3½ times. Well, when I go out, I don’t wanna spend 60 bucks on a $16 bottle of wine. So we ended up investing in some pretty expensive bottles of wines, $30, $40 retail. And I said ‘let’s make $15 on this bottle of wine, or add $20 to a $40 wine to pay for washing the glasses.’ We just mark it up marginally, almost like we’ve got a 15 and a 20 on the dartboard”

Wines: “A lot of people go up to [wine manager] John Provezano and say can you get me this, and the next time they come, he’ll have two bottles of something set aside for them.”

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 13th, 2008 at 9:10 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.