Sommelier & Waiter wine encounters?

[stevebody]

More and more - especially since opening our shop - we've taken to bringing our own and paying the corkage. It's rarely over $20 and here's the reason that works:

Example: La Carraia "Fobiano"
One of our favorite wines.
Wholesale cost: 18.90
My retail: $25.99
Wine List Price: $95
(at our favorite swanky Italian
place in Kirkland)
Their Corkage: $15
Our cost w/corkage: $33.90
Saved: 61.10

That's a radical example but not the most extreme around here. What restaurants think of as fair markup has always struck me as extortion based on the fact that their wine is all you have to choose from, short of bringing your own. One knucklehead I worked with raised hell with me one day because I priced a $32.50 bottle of Barolo for "only" $65. He said it should be $85 and screamed that he was "losing money". Never mind that we were selling the bejesus out of it at $65 and hadn't sold ONE bottle in 14 months at $85. It's really owners who drive the wine program at most restaurants because a lot of them are quite happy to stock crappy $5 wines and sell them at inflated prices. If your sommelier seems awkward or hamstrung, it's sometimes because they've got marching orders.

My favorite horror stories have to do with waiters trying to brazen their way through selling wine when they clearly don't know anything about it, like the guy who tried to convince me that Valpolicella is made from a grape called Valpolicella, after I told him I wasn't looking for a blend. Lying to an unfamiliar patron is the worst thing a restaurant person can do because you never know who you're dealing with. A waiter here told me about Robert Parker dining at the restaurant where he worked and one of his buddies, who didn't recognize Parker, trying to quote his own review back to him - a totally fabricated rating and review that Parker had never written. I asked my pal if he had told his friend that it was Parker and he said, "No. It was too much fun watching Parker's eyes glaze over."

It's a minefield but, for me, I just gently take over the process and steer the server toward what I'd like, hoping that I can make them think that they did it all. That offer of a sip from the bottle works wonders, though. I most always do that, even when we've brought our own.

[This message has been edited by stevebody (edited 04-18-2006).]