please help

[Randy Caparoso]

If this is your restaurant, and you are licensed to sell wine, then you have no excuses if wine sales are poor due to lack of staff knowledge. Not only are distributors more than happy to come in and present wines to your staff (their cost!), you are also required to educate yourself.

The fact that you've checked in with the wineboard is good. There are also some excellent publications available oriented specifically for restaurateurs. I strongly recommend Restaurant Wine magazine (www.winetaste.com; e-mail, restwine@winetaste.com), written and published by Ronn Wiegand, MW/MS. Also look into Sante - The Magazine of Restaurant Wine & Spirits Management (e-mail, santevin@sover.net). Of course, general interest publications like Wine Spectator, Wines & Spirits, and Curmudgeon's own Wine Trader are excellent sources to help you keep abreast of market interests and trends. If you subscribe and read all of them from cover to back, you'll soon be able to talk about wine as comfortably as anyone. Guaranteed!

Finally, you need some basic texts. I've been in the restaurant business since 1974, and I still use them. Just today one of my restaurant managers asked me to speak to his staff on a 20 Year Old Moscatel de Setubal. I couldn't remember everything, so I was immediately on the phone calling my home and asking my wife to look up Setubal in the Oxford Companion to Wine (edited by Jancis Robinson), by far the most complete and authoritative encyclopedic book available today. Armed with this last minute information, I was able to give a good accounting of myself.

Another super-basic book is Hugh Johnson's The World Atlas of Wine. The third most essential book you can buy is Jancis Robinson's Vines, Grapes and Wines, a great source of information on wine varietals. The finest book on the art of wine tasting (and thus a great tool for preparing to lead staff tastings) is still Michael Broadbent's Wine Tasting.

Order any of these books through your nearest Borders, Barnes & Noble or local bookstore. The books and periodicals that I've talked about adds up to about a $350 outlay, but the return that you'll get in sales (especially if you encourage your staff to do the same) would be a far, far better thing than you've ever done before.

Okay? Good luck!