What’s next for restaurant wine?
by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On
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?