I once saw a social media post by the Editor In Chief of a major wine industry magazine. Her words:
In P-Town I asked a bartender, "What's the style of your Falanghina?" I wasn't familiar with the variety, so I was hoping she could tell me something. Her answer: "What’s the style? It’s Falanghina!" As if I asked her what water tastes like. So instead of taking the opportunity to educate me, she gave me the "duh, EVERYone know that" response.
This was obviously the case of a server who either didn’t know the answer, or was just in need of attitude adjustment. The problem is common enough, and one of the perpetual challenges in our industry. It’s hard to keep servers up on training, and maybe even harder to find ones with a caring attitude and decent intelligence.
Yet the simplest, most effective solution is very much within our control: Wine lists with actual descriptions. Such as, something like this for a Falanghina: “This is a dry wine, comes from Campania, has mineral, citrus, licorice flavors,” etc. It’s not just guests who would find this helpful—it’s also servers, bartenders, managers, and even other wine professionals. If the information is always right there on the wine list, everyone benefits.
Face it, we all walk into restaurants and find wines on lists that we haven’t a clue about. Falanghina and Ribolla Gialla, we may know; but not all of us can wax philosophical about Ànima Negra, Biancolella, or even Norton or Maréchal Foch.
If we want our guests to order, say, a rare, high-priced yet fabulously distinct Assyrtkio, we might even make it easy for them by advising on its pronunciation (ah-SEER-tee-koh), not just its origin in Santorini in Greece or the fact that it's a high mineral/acid white.
I’ve heard just about all the reasons why restaurants say they do not to include descriptions in their wine lists, and none of them hold water. Simply put, consumers of all goods appreciate and strongly feel the need for descriptions.
Imagine, say, retail stores with no shelf talkers, or buying a car or appliance without information beyond sticker prices. Most consumers do not automatically know that a Riesling spätlese is usually medium-sweet, kabinett less sweet, and trocken is dry; so why in the world would you not disclose that most basic piece of information, and more, on your wine list?
We want our guests to verbally engage our servers is one of the reasons commonly given for not putting descriptions on wine lists. The reality is that the vast majority of guests prefer to make wine buying decisions without engaging servers, or even sommeliers, for any number of reasons to which they are entitled; including the fact that many people simply do not trust servers or sommeliers, or maybe they're just antisocial or feel perfectly capable of choosing wine on their own. They're the guests, it's their prerogative.
I'd also venture to say that lack of wine list information is probably the main reason why even restaurants with huge, award-winning selections of exciting, alternative style wines end up selling more Santa Margherita Pinot Grigio or Rombauer Chardonnay than anything else. It’s your own damned fault if your guests end up ordering the same wines that they would at the restaurant down the street if you haven’t bothered to include information that might have persuaded them to try alternatives—wines that truly represent you, and better enhance your dishes.
In this day and age of increasing competition, descriptions are also one way to clearly demonstrate individuality; what makes you so special. Of course, if you’re not capable of writing correct, intelligent descriptions on your own, or if you lack the qualified staff (or the wherewithal to retain reliable consultants) to help you, then you have no business including descriptions on your list. Dumb or misleading descriptions are just as bad as none at all.
But the fact of on-premise life in many markets today is that you need to differentiate yourself just to stay alive by offering more imaginative cuisine, plus more imaginative, fun, new, exciting wines, hopefully focused on your cuisine. The good news is that there are lots of these new wines out there. The opportunities are there.
When you do decide to sell new, cutting-edge wines, staff training becomes just as important as wine list descriptions or explanations for your selections. It's a matter of telling both your staff and guests exactly why you're offering them new, exciting things, and why it's so much more fun than the same ol' stuff that can be found anywhere.
When done right, wine list descriptions can be not only informative, but they can sell your wine program in ways that are far more controllable than dependence upon servers, for all their wildly varying levels of competence. So let’s talk descriptions and what they should do for you, while looking at a few great examples of what’s been done out there.
1. Descriptions should be differentiating
That is, help guests make informed choices between one wine or another. At Hiroshi Eurasian Tapas in Honolulu, for instance, Chardonnays have been divided between UN-OAKED, MODERATE OAK, BOLD & OAKY, and for good measure, OUR LATEST DISCOVERIES. How sensible is that? You also find one-line descriptions under every Chardonnay that draws guests to salient distinctions: Ici/La-Bas’ Philippine is a very profound, dramatic, Burgundian style of Anderson Valley Chardonnay, and Neyers’ Thieriot, a mega-intense, unfiltered, unfined Sonoma Coast thoroughbred. In less than eight or nine words, guests are not only informed, they are compelled to try these extraordinary wines by descriptions expressing enthusiasm and conviction.
2. Descriptions should tell them what they don’t know
Beginning and seasoned wine drinkers alike would be surprised to learn, what I once learned at PRIMA in Walnut Creek, that Pinot grigio originated in the fields of Burgundy, where it is called Pinot beurot and is allowed in red Burgundy. For her Il Capriccio in Waltham, Massachussetts, co-owner/sommelier Jeannie Rogers has related entire stories of wines that she’s personally discovered and imported from Italy; teaching her guests during the process about, say, Sagrantino made by the Bea family: Prototypical Umbrian wines that are often inaccessible when youthful, but addictively complex when bottle aged, the Sagrantino grape making a rich, deep and intense wine.
3. Descriptions should be insightful
San Francisco’s legendary Rubicon, closed in 2008 after fourteen fruitful years, will always be remembered for how it made even a gigantic, deep wine list perfectly readable and compelling. Their lists didn't include a description for every wine, but its wine list categories and sub-categories were laid out with such loving first-hand descriptions that a guest always felt almost commanded to try, say, $90-to-$350 wines from Chambolle-Musigny, described as being at a bend in the golden slope of the Côte d’Or where sheer limestone cliffs tower above the center of the village, intimidating and unplantable, the wines from the appellation combining a mineral purity with a firm, long and intense cherry stone flavor. Beaunes and Savignys, on the other hand, were described as possessing silky textures and lighter tannins, with red fruit characteristics, like strawberry and Bing cherry, whereas damson plum and smoke are often characteristics of wines from Pommard. Even guests with all the knowledge of Burgundy in the world could appreciate these insights giving verbal tastes of appellations.
4. Descriptions need to be personal
There might be no better way to express all the hard work you’ve personally put into your selections than sharing personal experiences. At Insieme in New York, Paul Grieco was a master at that. In a description of Gravner’s Ribolla Gialla, for instance, you could perceive the personality of the wine as much as the sommelier’s: Fermented in amphora… with no temperature control, if you want to taste what wine was like 2000 years ago, well here it is in all its funky, whacked out, controversial glory… we generally advise wearing a seat belt when you consume this wine. Grieco describes a Gewürztraminer as a grape that everyone loves to love or loves to hate… a whirlpool of lychees and rose petals combined with apricots and peaches… drinking this wine is either a thrilling ride or a wrong turn down Queens Boulevard. No wonder Grieco, in his day, developed such a strong following, not to mention accolades in publications such as the New York Times. You didn't just learn about wines by reading his wine lists, you learned to appreciate the man himself—and by extension, his restaurants and wine bars.
5. Descriptions should be food focused
Lest you forget, in restaurants wines are consumed with food, and the best possible wine/food matches lead to the best possible experiences of your restaurant. Food related descriptions need not be complex or earth-shatteringly profound. At Jiko in Walt Disney World, for example, I once found a Sauvignon Blanc recommended as light and refreshing… fantastic with our cucumber-tomato salad and jumbo scallops; and Shiraz, a truly great match with our berbere braised lamb shank. Conversely, I was almost shocked by the positive response in a restaurant I consulted for in Memphis, when I included “Ideal Wine Matches” on the food menus; such as a Grüner Veltliner with crawfish beignets, and a Fleurie with mussels à la marinière. Many of the guests may have never heard of Grüner Veltliner or Fleurie, but they knew enough about crawfish beignets and French style mussels to want to drink these wines, no questions asked, simply because we suggested them. If you've never tried this, I think you'd be surprised by how easy it is to get guests to take up your recommendations. Generally speaking, they are eager to go where you want them to go; which, of course, is a lot of the fun of dining out.
That is to say, ultimately wine list descriptions are indeed about control: When you take the time to explain things, guests are more likely to experience the wines you want them to experience; and while doing so, experiencing the joy and exhilaration you’ve also experienced in the wines, especially in the context of certain dishes. If you’re a working sommelier, what else is life for?