Choosing a wine at the restaurant is not so easy as it could seem, but there’re few tricks to safely escape the situation.
In the last 12 months the entire world accumulated an insane quantity of postponed dinners to date to be set. Dinners with friends, relatives, business dinner or with future lovers.
Sooner or later we’ll be able again to put legs under the table and fully enjoy a nice dinner, with any worries but feeling good.
The only setback that can fit between us and a perfect night is the choice of wine. Not for the bottle itself, but for the image of us we’ll show at that stage. This obviously is reinforced in case of business dinners or even more for a romantic ones, not mentioning a first date…
Some restaurant’s wine lists sometimes scares, other times give a sort of embarrassment, sometimes a awe for the quantity of listed bottles.
Seated (hopefully) in good company, if the dishes list makes us feeling a bit unsure because we’d like to try a bit of everything, the wine list seems planned by psychologists looking for subjects to be tested as they try to survive the anxiety in looking for the “right” wine.
But which one is the “right” wine? Many criteria can be used, don’t trust the experts, they’ll always tell you wine need to be paired with food! From a pure academic point of view food and wine pairing is surely the right criteria. But what if we’d like a cheap wine, or try a brand new wine, or if we’d like to amaze our fellow diners or even more make a good impression on a future partner?
Restaurants with a refined wine list offer to their client a wide range of choice, often suggesting winemakers and wines not readily available for private consumer, that is reserved for restaurants. It comes out a wine list able to get attention from wine-passionates, but also able to floor a less-incline to extreme sports customer.
From a non-accurate and super-personal statistical survey over a long period and numberless bad deals – both in term of paid price and wine quality – comes out that the most applied criteria in choosing a wine from a wine list of totally unknown wines is the average price: taken away the most expensive wines (what? 175 euros for a sparkling wine??) and the cheapest ones (what a bad impression with my fellow diners and with the waiter…), we’re gonna stay in the middle.
Once targeted a price range, the second scientifically proved criteria is the one related with the more or less pretentious denomination (G.I, PDO), that in some way lead the thoughts to more exclusive denominations.
It’s not a coincidence that in recent years wines like Vino Nobile di Montepulciano DOCG or Morellino di Scansano DOCG have been amongst the most popular and purchased by Italians, both in supermarkets and restaurants. Their names bring to super quality wine production area, to a clearly viticulture-voted land; and the, wanna bet in choosing a wine paired with a loud “here we go, let’s take this, great wine!”, with high chances of approval by the fellow diners to who the wine name will sound exactly as it sound to us.
Willing to stay on a more conservative mood, once tightened our research range, most of the job is done and in the worst case a few labels will remain to choose from. At this stage we’ll be able to show off courage and risk taking attitude with a nice “I don’t know this, let’s try it!” – giving the impression of knowing the others (anyway, who’ll ever find out we never heard about the others?).
Limiting the range of choice will enable us to engage with the waiter/sommelier, asking for a suggestion between the few selected bottles, being sure not to risk a jump into the unknown on the price side from which would be hard to safely escape.
It obviously exists an opposite approach: going directly to the “names” in order to be sure to hit the target. Famous names, famed denominations, prestigious wines. The food pairing could be be not the best one but who cares? A Brunello, a Barolo or an Amarone on the table never caused anyone to turn up his nose and I call you out to find someone able to complain!
Choosing a top-end bottle you need to know the aim of the most expensive bottles in the wine lists: their presence is not meant to broaden the client’s choice, but to give fame and prestige to the restaurant.
Their presence justify a upward adjustment of the entire list, with remarkable focus on the bottom line. In choosing an “entry-level” wine be prepared to pay a bit more for it if in the same wine list super-premium priced wines are listed.
Let’s make it clear, the possible upward adjustment is not a mere matter of profit, but it’s also based on higher costs due right to the presence of these super-premium bottles.
The dilemma “I don’t know any wine – too expensive – too cheap – I wanna make a good impression” has no perfect solution formula. If you’re trying to solve it keeping the wine list high in front of you to hide your eyes away from your fellow diners you need to make a choice.
You can either decide to simply declare to not knowing any wine and so choosing a wine in the medium-low price segment in order to limit the risks (but anyway trying something new), or asking for help to the waiter/sommelier clearly stating your budget limits.
Asking suggestions to the sommelier, targeting a price range, won’t make you loosing points in his/her eyes but it will rather give the sommelier the chance to work at his/her best, sorting out for you the best available wine, with great relief for you that will not run the risk of a wrong choice (and maybe even costly).
Do you want to pick up the cheapest wines during a romantic dinner? Easy! Let’s reason your choice as an accurate analysis of quality/price ratio of the selected wine! “I never found this wine at this price, they probably got wrong…let’s take it, you’ll like it”! Anyway let’s remember the number one rule in these situations: let’s take it easy, if you’re asking you thousands of questions in front of a wine list because you have no clue of what picking up, then very likely wine is not your primary passion – at least not yet – so too your expectations will have no their nose in the air like those of a wine passionate ones. Let’s then choose with levity, you’re at the restaurant to enjoy the dinner and the company, wine will just be a decoration. Let’s treat it accordingly.