Why wine sales in fine dining restaurants are at a crossroads

If there is a reckoning to be had, this is probably a good time, before enthusiasm for wine sinks completely into oblivion

Although I specialized in wine during nearly the entirety of my career in hospitality, when I worked in restaurants I never felt completely part of the rest of the wine world. That’s because selling wine in restaurants is unlike selling in any other outlet.

Retailers, for instance, sell wine marked up with smaller margins. Stands to reason because when you walk into a store you are not greeted by an elegantly attired maître d’ or beautiful hostess to escort you down a sales aisle. There is no white table cloth or fresh flowers set on the counters. There is no waiter or sommelier to take your order, then open and pour a bottle right before your eyes; let alone valets parking your car and entire teams of people dressed in white to cook your dishes, hand-polish your glasses and utensils and wash your dirty dishes.

All these services and accoutrements cost money, and lots of it. The more elaborate the restaurant, the more you pay. Like the appreciation of wine and the culinary arts itself, there doesn’t seem to be an end to the demand for fine dining restaurants. They will exist as long as there are people, or those we call “guests,” demanding those experiences.

Why can’t restaurant wine experiences be friendly? (Newsflash: It can!)

Restaurant wine lists, as you undoubtedly know, come in all sizes, shapes and styles. I had my own way of composing and managing them, but like in just about all other restaurants, my selections weren’t listed like “shelf talkers” with numerical scores like what you find in most retail stores. I’m aware of that because I worked in, and even managed, specialty wine stores during much of my first ten years working as a restaurant sommelier, holding down day and night jobs to support a family of six.

But I did take the retail approach to wine sales to heart. I didn’t do wine “ratings” (I always thought numerical scores were the dumbest things in the world), but I made sure my wine lists came with 1-line descriptions for each and every selection, no exceptions; sometimes with extra verbiage describing categories of wine. To this day, I don’t understand wine lists that refuse to give a hint about a wine’s taste, and most restaurants still don’t.

I may defend the way wine is sold, and priced, in the on-premise industry to Kingdom Come, but I will never defend the gall of the vast majority of restaurants for making comprehension and appreciation of wine as difficult as possible. To me, that’s the opposite of “hospitality.”

Why don’t restaurants put out wine lists that inform? You may think this is because it is a time-honored custom or noble tradition to list wines like names in an old school telephone book, but it isn’t. It’s because restaurateurs, and even sommeliers who you would think should be all about wine education, are just too lazy. They may love the idea of acquiring numerous wines for their “cellars”⏤the pretentious ones use the word “curate,” as if they were running museums, not eateries⏤but they just don’t want to go through the trouble of thinking of words or sentences to make choosing wines easier on their own guests.

Chefs, when you think of it, do not go to culinary schools to learn literary skills. They go to cook. Yet when they compose menus they are well aware of the fact that they better include most of the major ingredients and sauces when listing dishes. Otherwise, what does a guest have to go on? Yes, servers can take the time to verbally describe dishes and wines at the table, but there is a limit to an average customer’s patience, and the amount of extra labor restaurants can afford to have people standing around yabbering.

If there is anything about restaurant wine sales that has got to change, it’s this distinct lack of caring about the basic needs of guests. In this day and age of failing markets, and widening gulfs between average and evolved wine buffs, there is simply no excuse for not making wine friendlier in restaurants.

Repercussions of the American three-tier system

Then there is the make-up of wine lists themselves. Most wine lists, as it’s been often pointed out, represent the input of distributors or wholesalers. The entire American system of wine distribution and sales, after all, is controlled by a three-tier system locked into place since the end of Prohibition. Given that reality, I have nothing against the middlemen⏤it’s their job to make sure their products are placed on as many restaurant wine lists, or retail shelves, as possible.

The larger issue is the choices made by restaurants. Distributors are there to supply wine, not dictate what goes on wine lists. The salesman who supplies paints is not the artist. Food vendors are not supposed to be the ones telling chefs what to cook. Even if a sales representative is highly proficient in wine, the simple fact of the matter is that a distributor’s priorities are never exactly the same as that of a restaurant’s⏤their theme, their cuisine, their price points, their specific clientele or market needs.

The use of distributors to make the choices of what wines go into restaurants explains why, in any given town or community, you often see almost the exact same wines in every restaurant, whether it’s a steakhouse or a pizza parlor, Chinese or Italian cuisine, French or fusion, or anything “new American.” Everywhere you see this, you are seeing the work of distributors running rampant; where restaurants have been availing themselves to their products and services rather than figuring things out for themselves.

Nowadays, though, not in every restaurant. Restaurant owners, beverage managers and sommeliers have, in fact, become more wine-savvy than ever. We are seeing more and more wine lists composed with a sense of independence, originality, creativity; big lists, short lists, reasonably priced lists, exorbitantly priced lists, wine lists that are informative, wine lists that are as uninformative as ever. No matter the approach or style, any wine list that is composed to meet a specific restaurant’s needs by someone with at least a modicum of intelligence⏤I’ll take just well meaning effort⏤is a better wine list than one selected and printed up by a distributor.

Restaurant wine prices are reasonable

Wine lists, no question, are better than ever; getting more interesting by the day. Considering the never-ending rise in costs of growing, producing and shipping wine, it’s a wonder restaurant wines are priced as reasonably as they are. The word “reasonable” in the same sentence as “restaurant wines” may not sound plausible to you. Restaurant wine pricing is outrageous, isn’t it?

The bare and naked fact of the matter is that, in restaurants, wines are marked up less than any other product, including food, beer, and spirits or cocktails. I know you hear it said all the time by people who have no idea how the industry operates: Restaurants break even on food and make their money on wine. How can a revenue center with the lowest profit margin be the most profitable? Simple answer, it’s not. Restaurants need to keep wine prices as low as they can just to be able to sell glasses and bottles. You can push guests, even well-heeled ones, only so far.

Guest tastes in wine, as with food, are also more sophisticated than ever. The better, or more handcrafted, the wine, the higher the cost. It’s restaurants that are forced to eat most of the rising costs necessary to offer more sophisticated wine. Yet in restaurants, wines still need to be priced high enough to help cover the ever increasing costs of everything else, from goods and labor to occupancy and operations. Otherwise there are no restaurants.

Wine’s continuing role as window dressing

On top of that, wine cellars in the finest restaurants, representing investments ranging anywhere from $30,000 to well over half-a-million, need to be handled like a fixed asset (similar to furniture, kitchen equipment and window dressing) rather than rotating inventory. Meaning, most restaurant do not even see returns on their wine program on a weekly, monthly, or even yearly basis. Yet they’re expected to keep up these large inventories all the same.

So why do fine dining restaurants even bother selling wine? It goes without saying, because that’s what the customer demands. Despite what anyone says about wine being less and less important to the everyday consumer, it is still very important. Especially to those who enjoy the age-old pleasures of food served with wine, by people waiting on them hand and foot.

Restaurant wine sales may be as fraught, and expensive, a proposition as ever, but it’s not going away anytime soon.