Tag Archives: restaurant wine

Restaurant wine, one last time

women drinking wine at lunch
“When did the restaurant start charging $50 a bottle for this junk?”

It may not have come back, and we know why — too high prices

A long-time blog reader sent the following:

“American restaurants are the worst offenders. Our very reasonably priced local Chinese raised its price for my favorite Pinot Grigio ($7.99 at Total Wine) from $9 to $15 — and now they also pour short.”

The Wine Curmudgeon has spent quite a bit of time over the past 16 years trying to help restaurants boost their wine sales, and, as this anecdote shows, to little avail. And it’s just not this story that shows how bad things are, but plenty of statistics:

• The number of fine dining establishments, wine’s restaurant backbone, fell by almost 4 percent last year.

• Restaurant wine lists are smaller than ever, as restaurants try to save money by cutting wine inventory.

• Pandemic recovery has been slow — if at all. Depending on whose numbers you consult, restaurant wine sales since the initial pandemic recovery have been flat to lower, and there’s even some doubt they’re back to 2019 levels.

And, to add a little doom to the gloom, one of the most important wine number crunchers reports that all U.S. wine sales declined 7.4 percent in volume between October 2022 and September 2023, and are down 8.4 percent through September of this year.

So what does the restaurant business do? Raise prices, of course.

One final time: Put quality cheap wine on your list that you can sell for $20 a bottle. It’s out there, and I would be happy to recommend some. You’ll sell more wine, turn inventory more quickly, make more money, and make your customers happy.

Isn’t that the idea?

Photo: “Ladies that lunch” by futureshape is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Restaurant wine: “No one at the table knows anything about wine, including the waiter”

Comedian Michael McIntyre’s take on ordering wine in a restaurant

This, from the British comic Michael McIntyre, is both funny and terrifying — because it’s all too true: “We know red color and white color, but we pretend we all know a great deal more. … Ignore all the words, and focus on the prices.”

And, as he points out, the restaurant staff, wine list, and all the rest isn’t much help. Not that the WC has ever experienced that.

Video courtesy of Michael McIntyre via YouTube

 

 

Winebits 788: Blood alcohol, trading down, wine thefts

family eating dinner
“No. no, no — no wine with dinner.”

This week’s wine news: Washington state wants to criminalize wine with dinner, plus restaurant diners are trading down and wine thieves strike again

• Two glasses is too many: The Washington state legislation will consider a bill to cut the state’s legal blood alcohol limit from .08 to .05. The change, following a similar bill in Utah, pretty much makes anyone who drinks a couple of glasses of wine with dinner legally drunk. The bill will also cut limits for marijuana and other drugs. We’ve discussed this subject on the blog many times before, and there is no easy way to parse the argument. Yes, we want to cut drunk driving deaths. But will cutting the limit do it? The results from Utah are inconclusive. And do we want to criminalize what is otherwise legal behavior? Reporter Renee Diaz does a fine job of outlining just that conundrum.

• Cheaper restaurants: Consumers are opting for less expensive restaurants, says a new report, and that’s not good news for the wine business. Consumers “have begun trading down, nonetheless – illustrating they have some simmering anxiety about what is happening or what’s to come. At least, that’s the gist from the first two weeks of public restaurant earnings calls – a solid indicator of consumer confidence given the industry’s ubiquity and discretionary position.” The downside is twofold for wine: first, even though we’re still eating out, we’ve switched to less expensive restaurants and which don’t necessarily serve wine; and second, that if we’re not eating at wine restaurants, how will that sector recover from the pandemic?

• More wine thefts: The Wine Spectator notes that wine thieves have been busy in Europe over the past several months, hitting cellars of wine-focused restaurants in Norway and Spain, as well as at retailer-grower in Austria. The magazine says there is no evidence the crimes are related, but that the thieves knew what they wanted. The stolen wines included some of the greatest names in the business, such as Harlan, Haut-Brion, Lafite Rothschild, Latour, Margaux, Mouton-Rothschild, Pétrus, Pingus, Sine Qua Non, Solaia and Yquem. All told, the value could have exceeded a quarter of a million dollars.

Winebits 777: Dog toys, restaurants, Winc

Bad Spaniels dog toy and dog
Churro, the blog’s associate editor, is waiting to hear what the Supreme Court will do in the Bad Spaniels case.

This week’s wine news: The Supreme Court will hear a crucial free speech case, plus more bad news for restaurants and Winc files for bankruptcy

WC note: Those of you who subscribe to the blog are supposed to get e-mails from Substack, offering the opportunity to give three, one-month, free subscriptions to the blog. I turned this on because Substack says it could lead to paid subscriptions, but the language is fuzzy about how often you’ll hear from Substack. If it’s too often, let me know.

• Dog toys and free speech: The Supreme Court will hear a dispute between Jack Daniel’s and a dog toy company that sells chewable “Bad Spaniels” whiskey bottles. We’ve written about this case on the blog – with a video featuring Churro, the blog’s associate editor – because the court’s ruling could limit what I can write here. Technically, it’s a trademark law case, with the whiskey company saying the dog toy will “confuse” consumers and so must be prohibited. But, as noted here, U.S. law and court precedent allows this sort of use, and has for decades. It’s called satire. If the court rules in favor Jack Daniel’s – and it has shown an amazing ability to ignore precedent – then I may have to give up a variety of regular features, including the April 1 post. Lawyers aren’t in the budget.

• Shorter hours? Restaurants are still dramatically decreasing their hours, a new study shows. Nation’s Restaurant News reports that the Datassential consultancy found the average restaurant is now open for 6.4 fewer hours per than it was three years prior, a decline of some 7 ½ percent. That means less demand, as well as staffing problems. The reasons for the decline in demand include less demand for in-person dining, as well as more people working from home. Independents and casual dining restaurants are shortening hours the most often. This does not bode well for the restaurant wine recovery we’re still waiting for.

• Winc files: Winc, the subscription wine club known for “bargains,” has filed for Chapter 11. Wine Industry Insight reports that the bankruptcy petition listed more than 100,000 creditors, “most of whom may be club members with unfulfilled orders.” Whoops. So much for those bargains. Chapter 11, for those of you who haven’t had to write these kinds of stories countless times over the years, allows a company to stay in business and restructure its obligations – sometimes paying off part of its debt, and sometimes not. I’ll try to keep tabs on this story; several readers over the years have told me they’ve used Winc.

 

The wine list that doesn’t include the names of the wines

man holing menu
“Not to worry — you don’t need to know the wine’s name.”

Stupid? Of course. But maybe not for the reasons most people think

How about a restaurant wine list, with descriptions of the wines, but without naming the wines? This is a bit much, even for the restaurant business, which treats wine with a greed that keeps on gouging.

But it happened recently in Britain — how about a “juicy Chilean merlot?” for £6.50 (about US$7) for 175 ml, two glasses or so?

Which, reported by thedrinksbusiness, led to a social media conflagration. The restaurant was either doing diners a great favor by not confusing them, or it was committing a great disservice by not identifying the wines. Tweeted one: “What happens when the unsuspecting consumer is met with an over-extracted Negroamaro. …. Words need to mean something and these appear to mean nothing.”

Ah, the wine business. Either wine drinkers are too stupid to care what they’re drinking, or we get strangled by jargon.

Yes, this is a crappy idea; we should know what we’re buying. But the experts missed the point. The restaurant almost certainly didn’t do this to make diners’ choices easier, but to manage its inventory more effectively. If it doesn’t put the name of the wine on the list, then it can sell any wine that more or less matches the description (to say nothing of saving the cost of reprinting the list if the wines change).

And what’s happening these days in post-pandemic and Brexit-staggered Britain? A supply chain crisis of major proportions, in which getting the same item consistently has been past difficult – and especially for restaurants. So not using names makes managing the wine list that much easier; just sub out the original if it’s not available, and who’s the wiser? In addition, if the restaurant can pick up a cheaper “juicy Chilean merlot,” it can sell it for the higher price – and more margin!

Finally, the WC would not be the WC if he didn’t mention one other thing that not using names does: Diners can’t check the wine’s retail price on their phone to see how much they’re being marked up.

Pretty clever, yes?

What’s next for restaurant wine?

restaurant wine list
“Where’s that $750 bottle? Let’s get a couple.”

No, it’s not lower prices – how about more famous brands and fewer interesting wines?

One of the biggest wine questions, as we come out of the pandemic: “What’s next for restaurant wine?” One international study says to expect more of the same – which means higher prices, less selection, and more famous brands.

“It became clear that there’s been a deep shift in restaurants.” including sommeliers pruning lists, buyers being much more selective, and restaurants focusing on the most well-known wines, says Pauline Vicard, the CEO of ARENI Global, a consultancy that studied wine lists in key cities around the world. And, if you’re a small or lesser known winery, it has become that much more difficult to get on lists.

A couple of caveats: First, the study looked at just a handful of international cities, and New York and San Francisco were the only ones in North America. So what’s true in those two places might not be true in Atlanta or Houston or Los Angeles. Second, the study only looked at high-end restaurants serving “fine wine,” so what it found might not apply to the Italian place on the corner.

Having said that, a couple of trends probably apply, regardless. First, restaurant wine, despite its problems over the past 10 or 15 years, remains hugely important. The study estimates that restaurants account for 30 percent of total European “fine wine” sales. So producers, despite sagging restaurant sales, are still desperate to get their wines on lists.

Second, pricing remains counter-intuitive. Want to lure diners back? Then shouldn’t wine cost less? But that wasn’t the case in New York or San Francisco. In each city, restaurants took more “entry-level wines” – those costing less than $100 – off lists than at any other price. In 2022, only out of six wines on New York lists cost less than $100; it was about one in five in San Francisco. But one in four wines, more or loss, costs more than $750 in each city.

Can someone explain how that will bring me back — let alone younger consumers?

Winebits 736: AI ID checks, restaurant wine, “healthy wine”

ai wine
“Stand still so I can get a good look at you.”

This week’s wine news: Artificial intelligence and checking IDs, plus more changes for restaurant wine and “healthy wine” is hip

• Can AI card drinkers? An English Aldi is testing software that will scan customer faces to see if they’re old enough to buy wine, beer, spirits, and cigarettes. The store, in Greenwich near London, is the discount retailer’s version of Amazon’s infamous Go stores, where there are no employees and no checkout – save for someone who wants to buy wine. Technically, says the story, it’s not facial recognition software, since the image is deleted after it’s used. For what that’s worth. Also in the “If you say so” department: The software company claims its system is so accurate that there is less than a 1 percent change of a 17-year-old fooling it.

• Smaller wine lists? Restaurants are scaling back their wine lists in the wake of the pandemic, says Nation’s Restaurant News, The story is wordy and tries to position the changes as “adjustments,” but the sense is that the days of massive, many page wine lists are ending – if they haven’t ended already. The other change? Restaurants will be changing lists more frequently, so that there will always be new items on it to make up for having fewer wines.

• Healthy booze: I’m going to take a more detailed look at so-called “healthy wine” – the low- and no-alcohol labels that seem to be all the rage these days, as well light wine that’s made to have less calories. I mention this piece because it shows how trendy these things have become; it includes details about a liquor store in swinging Soho that only carries non-alcoholic booze as well as a dedicated TikTok for sober drinking and a woman who compiles non-alcoholic cocktail recipes.