Ordering Wine in Restaurants

Does the task of choosing wine for your fellow diners fill you with fear and dread? If so, here’s a guide that may help ease the pain. 

Given what I do for a living, it’s not surprising that, when I’m out to dinner with a group of people, I’m frequently handed the wine list and called on to choose the tipple. It’s a task I hate. To paraphrase that well-known expression, you can please most of the people most of the time but it’s a given that you can’t please all the people all of the time. It follows that if you restrict your choice to house wine there’s always one who fancies pushing the boat out and who is at pains to let you know. Or there will be a miserable bastard in the party who finds your charming Valpolicella ripasso “too thin”. Or someone who doesn’t drink chardonnay but doesn’t mention the fact until after the cork’s been pulled. Last week I was dining with two friends, one a wine snob, the other a miser, on a shared bill basis. I really did not want to choose the wine. In the event I plucked up courage and went straight to the middle of the list, prepared to justify my choices to both parties. I’ve had better nights.

So it’s unsurprising that many people, faced with the prospect of ordering wine in a restaurant, feel intimidated, especially when lumbered with a wine list the size of a family bible containing a list of unfamiliar names as long as the national census. Only advice I can give is “chill; be your own person and make a mental note to strike any begrudger from your almanac of dining companions.”

The first choice you have to make is whether to order by the glass or by the bottle. If there are only two of you it’s kinder to the one who has volunteered to drive home if you opt to drink by the glass. That way there is no emotional pressure on your co-diner to knock back their half of the bottle. But bear in mind that if you do order by the bottle there is absolutely no shame in asking the waiter to replace the cork so you can drink the residue at home.

Initially, your task is to decide whether you’re going to drink red, white or both. Ordering both a red and white will obviously accommodate a broader range of preferences. Next, you should take into consideration what guests have chosen to eat. I’ve said before, I am not as heavily into wine and food matching as certain other wine critics. Nevertheless, there’s no doubt big, hearty red wines favour steak and stand up to rich sauces, whereas grilled chicken and salads can be paired to advantage with white wines. By all means take into consideration the preferences of your fellow guests but remember someone has to make the decision, so give yourself the casting vote. Take a deep breath and go for it.

When push comes to shove, it’s all down to how seriously a restaurant takes its wine. So do your homework. Find out before you go whether the restaurant you’ve booked pays due respect to wine. If they publish the wine list on the net, check out a few of their offerings. Googling a wine should tell you if it’s a dog or a diamond. While you are doing this, clock the r.r.p. if you can. Of course this may not be possible. Certain wines are marketed to the ‘on trade’ only. Hardly surprising – no restaurant wants its wines available in the offie down the road; nor do they want the customer to know what the wine costs. When it comes to mark-ups, 3 times the retail price is fairly normal. Anything less and you are getting something of a bargain. Most restaurants will have at least a couple of items on the carte – usually from well known producers where the r.r.p actually can be checked out.

The process requires interaction between chooser (you) and server (waiter, or, in a good restaurant, sommelier). First off, the server should show you the bottle BEFORE opening. Your initial task is to inspect the label. Sometimes the restaurant will be out of the vintage specified on the list and will substitute a different one without asking. You may not mind this, but now is the time to decide. If the restaurant has a trained sommelier, he or she is there to be used. Don’t be afraid to consult, when trying to decide what wines to order. Be careful, though. I was reviewing a restaurant recently where the sommelier put in an impassioned plea for us to have the Bourgueil. In the event it was thin and mean. Talking to other diners, it appeared he’d tried the same stunt on them. I reckon they must have had shedloads of this muck downstairs and that the sommelier was under orders to shift it!

After opening, the server should hand you the cork. Simply make sure it is not dried out, cracked or damaged, other than by the insertion of a corkscrew. Next, the server should pour a small amount into your glass. Swirl the glass (careful!) and sniff the wine. If you smell offensive odours – vinegar, bad eggs, farmyard manure, wet wool, newspaper from a damp cellar are the most common – then reject it. If unsure, ask the server to smell or get a second opinion from another guest.

If the wine passes the schnozz test, then taste. Be aware that rejecting a wine simply because you don’t like the taste is unfair – you have to shoulder a certain amount of responsibility. That said, a trained sommelier may notice your displeasure and offer a replacement and, if so, accept with thanks.

Only when you’ve given the thumbs up should the server pour more, filling the other guests’ glasses first. The server should only refill glasses as needed, to around one-third the way up the glass. Untrained servers will fill glasses to the brim and top up too frequently, object being to get you to order more wine. It’s a foolish and immoral attitude, in my opinion, and a trademark of a bad restaurant.