Hey Salty, I have this know-it-all brother-in-law who just has to be the smartest, most contrarian guy in the room. I was recently eating dinner with him and my lovely sister at a nice restaurant when he started lecturing me about how I shouldn’t have ordered a glass of wine because wine by the glass is always a rip-off. He talked for probably 10 minutes about how restaurants always mark up glasses of wine and if I was smart I would ordered the bottle or gotten a cocktail instead.
Okay, so he’s obviously a jerk, but is he right? I hadn’t ever thought about this. I just wanted a glass of wine, though maybe if I drank the whole bottle he’d be more tolerable.
Thanks,
Please Settle This For Me
Dear Settle,
I wish I could give you a slam-dunk-in-your-face-LOSERkind of response to your ratbag brother-in-law, but it’s not that simple. He’s not entirely wrong, but he’s not exactly right either. Like most things in life, the answer to whether wine by the glass is a rip-off is pretty much: Well, that depends.
First we need to know how restaurants price wine. Let’s cut to the chase: It’salloverpriced. The $35 bottle of wine on the list most likely cost that restaurant $7-$9, give or take. The restaurant is looking to make roughly a 70% profit margin on wine, so whether you order by the bottle or the glass, you’re paying more than you’d pay for that same bottle, even with a retail markup at a liquor store. But the same is true of the food—chicken costs less at the Costco than it does at the nice restaurant. That’s how restaurants work.
Now let’s take that $35 bottle of wine and break it down by glass pours. The restaurant gets probably four—maybe five if they’re stingy—by-the-glass orders out of the bottle, depending on how many ounces they pour into each glass. That would price each glass at $7-$8.75. The restaurant, though, might realize a $8 glass is pretty cheap and that most people expect to pay something like $9 at minimum, especially if the bar’s cocktails are $9 or more. So now that $35 bottle becomes a $9 or $10 glass, which some people would consider a ripoff considering the bottle probably retails for no more than $9.
Of course, the opposite could be true for high-end wines: A by-the-glass pour of a bottle listed for $150 on the menu could break down to $30 per glass, which is steep. But the restaurant might want to have some schmancy Champagne on the list around the holidays, so they list it for $22 to encourage people to order it. That’s could be considered a decent deal. But this is all hypothetical, your results may vary, beware the stingy pour, etc. A friend of mine who’s an assistant general manager at a wine bar says she’ll often get good deals on bottles from under-the-radar winemakers or lesser-known regions. Unless you’re a wine buyer, how would you know what a bottle wholesalers for anyway? Oh right, because you’re someone’s know-it-all, fun-ruining relative.
人们对玻璃的葡萄酒保持警惕的另一个原因是新鲜问题。您会看到调酒师拉开了那个怪异的真空软木塞塞子，这让您想知道那瓶子还是开了多长时间。没有一个值得盐的酒保会故意为您提供陈旧的葡萄酒，但是一些阴暗的餐厅试图摆脱它。（餐厅有16种葡萄酒，玻璃杯？跳过它。没有人能这么快葡萄酒。）记住，如果它味道旧，可以随时将其送回，并要求酒吧打开一个新瓶子。一点点的经验法则：想想每天餐厅可能会卖多少张餐厅的霞多丽玻璃杯。这比在印第安纳州加里外面的一家体育酒吧出售的玻璃杯上出售的一些晦涩的希腊葡萄酒的可能性较小。使用您的野生型。
And as for what to say to your brother-in-law… you can tell him Salty told him to kiss off. If you’re only going to drink one glass of a certain type of wine, then why buy it by the bottle? And if you want wine with dinner, why order a cocktail? The biggest waste of money at a restaurant is to order food or drink you don’t want or won’t like—and that’s true 100% of the time.
Got a question about dining out etiquette? Or just a general question about life we can help you with? Email us:salty@www.jaycn.org