OK, in typical fashion, I’m going to take a bass-ackwards approach to starting up this puppy: The first post looks ahead to 2008, while the second will peek back at 2007.
Eating out always has been and always should be a treat. But for wine lovers, there are pitfalls galore, starting, of course, with the prices (so of course this missive will finish with that). Here’s my wish list for wines at local restaurants in the coming year:
More focus: Too many eateries have massive wine lists. There’s nothing wrong with multi-course, haute-cuisine restaurants such as La Belle Vie boasting a hefty inventory, especially when it’s as food-friendly as Bill Summerville’s is. But having a lot of options is not always a good thing.
First of all, wading through dozens of chardonnays and cabernets can be both a time drain and a distraction to anyone who’s actually at a restaurant to be with friends. Worse, such lists all too often feel slapped together (and not always by an employee; the hand of distributors can be seen at many spots).
It’s vastly preferable to have a shorter, more thoughtful list, something that shows the vision of a manager or chef who is passionate about the kismet that the wine-food combo can offer. Jim Reininger at Restaurant Alma, Mega Hoehn at Heartland and Victoria Levy at Lucia’s are among the best in town at eschewing quantity for quality and value in their laser-honed wine lists.
Arguably the best kind of eating-out experience is being able to put oneself in the hands of a gifted chef, to know that unconditional trust in what he or she is doing is almost certain to be rewarded. That should happen more often with wine lists as well.
Don’t pour it on: One of the great wonders of wine-drinking is the way a 4- or 6-ounce pour can evolve as one slowly savors it. One doesn’t have to be a scientist to understand or appreciate the way a wine can “open up” or otherwise develop in the glass.
So why do all too many waitpersons pop by and splash more juice into the glass without first asking if that’s what the customer desires? That’s a semi-rhetorical question, by the way, as the purpose all too often is to empty out that first bottle and get customers going on a second.
It’s not like there’s a shortage of questions that a restaurant staff throws our way these days, with “Are we finished with that?” and “Do you need change?” being the most egregious. Can they not simply incorporate a query that a wine drinker would actually find relevant, asking at the outset if the folks at the table prefer to do their own subsequent pouring?
Not half-bad: Many Minnesotans don’t know that it’s OK to cap an unfinished bottle at a restaurant and tote it home (preferably in the trunk, in case you have an encounter with the local constabulary). But there’s wildly varying quality in wines on the second or third day after they were opened.
That’s not the only reason half-bottles of wine (375 ml., or about two glasses) are such a swell idea at restaurants. They’re ideal for eating alone, of course, or when there’s just one wine-drinker at the table, or when different diners want different varietals, or when a certain wine might rock with one course but not with the next, or when … well, you get the idea.
Half-bottles are popping up at more and more dining establishments, and some, such as Il Vesco Vino in St. Paul, are serving mini-carafes in 250- and 500-ml. portions. Kudos on that front.
And by the way, customers have no right to squawk about paying more than 50 percent of a full bottle’s price. It costs the wineries more to make these little guys, and a restaurant has every right to pass that along. On the other hand …
Time for a markdown: Michael Pollan and others have made the case that our food prices are artificially low, thanks to government subsidies and other machinations, far more eloquently than I ever could. But a case could be made that restaurants are the worst offenders. Over and over, we hear that these establishments have little or no margin on food, that they make virtually all their profits on wine and other beverages.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but operating that way is just wrong. Yes, restaurants have storage costs that legitimately nudge up the price of wine. But 10-percent markups on the food and 200-plus-percent markups on wine and other spirits make for an indefensible formula.
And all too often, when folks encounter these ridiculous tariffs on wine, their anger or disgust is directed more at wine in general than at the system that makes the prices untenable. (A more logical response would be the way I felt about the restaurant, rather than tea-leaf growers, when I was dunned $4 for iced tea at a certain high-ceilinged, Art Moderne-laden downtown-Minneapolis eatery last summer.)
I’m not saying restaurants should have the exact same profit margins on victuals and vino, just that they should move a lot closer to the semi-free-market capitalism we get in groceries and wine stores. In the meantime, any place that’s marking up wines 200-plus percent over retail (which is well over 200 percent of what they’re paying) should take no umbrage whatsoever when customers want to bring their own wine.
Bill Ward’s column “Liquid Assets” appears in the Taste section every Thursday.
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