Buying wine in a restaurant can be both an uplifting and a dispiriting experience. Uplifting because you are very likely to come across wonderful wines you just won’t find anywhere else, wines chosen specifically to suit the style and food of the chef, with a highly trained sommelier on hand to proffer genuine and useful advice.
Dispiriting because the savage mark ups charged by all too many greedy restaurateurs these days can put all but the most basic of wines out of our reach.
The usual formula is for the restaurant to multiply a wine’s original trade price by anything from between three to five, and the results can be eye-wateringly pricey and in many cases indefensible.
The restaurateur’s response is invariably that such mark ups help go towards the rent, the rates, the linen tablecloths, the fancy glasses, staff wages and so on, essential in these straightened times. Hmmm.
Sometimes you just feel ripped off.
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