Should you really shun the second cheapest bottle on the wine list?

If your reaction to opening a restaurant wine list recently was more “How much?” than, “That sounds like a lovely Italian white,” don’t worry, you haven’t morphed into a wine Grinch. The cost of the average glass of wine is nudging around $15 or more in many restaurants.

It would be unfair to heap disdain on beleaguered restaurateurs, struggling under the hefty weight of rent rises, minimum wage hikes and all the inflationary rest. Equally, though, increasing numbers of us are feeling priced out of eating out at all, and that doesn’t help anyone.

The whole point of eating out is to have a good time, and if that means making smart choices with the wine list, here are my top seven tips for enjoying good wine without succumbing to the feeling of the bank balance of doom.

1. Embrace the house

There is no shame in ordering the cheapest wine on the list, and doing so shouldn’t mean you have a disappointing experience. In the words of Ronan Sayburn, one-time super-sommelier for Gordon Ramsay and now owner of the RS Wine Academy, “a good restaurant lives or dies by the quality of its house wine. It ought to be a point of pride to have a good one”. In other words, the house wine is often a sterling pick. Try it.

2. You don’t have to avoid the second wine on the list, either

A paper published in Economics Letters that analysed the wine lists of 249 London-based restaurants found that the second-cheapest wine on the list does not (as many people suspect) carry a brutal mark-up. In fact, its authors discovered that “the percentage mark-up on second-cheapest wine […] was well below the peak mark-up, which tends to occur around the median wine on the menu”.

3. Game your bookings around BYO corkage deals

Many restaurants offer incentives to keep their tables full at otherwise quiet times, and sometimes this involves a stupidly good corkage deal. Melbourne institution France Soir charges zero corkage for lunch Monday to Wednesdays and these restaurants all offer BYO deals. In Sydney, Loulou’s Bistro offers $20 corkage on Tuesdays and Wednesday nights and these restaurants also offer banging BYO deals.

4. One for the nerds: Read the wine list in advance

I appreciate that for most people this piece of advice will be as tempting as an invitation to spend an evening checking a tax return but, for those who really love wine, half an hour in the company of a long wine list is half an hour of pure pleasure, careering through a flavour landscape, a voyage that will also reveal quite a lot about the taste-personality of the person who wrote the list. Wallow in the task, and you’re likely to unearth the bargain gems.

5. Head into the unknown at the budget end of the list

See that pinot noir, pale rosé and primitivo? They’re all there because the restaurant knows its customers expect to see them, not because they’re astonishingly well-priced. The bottles you ignore because you don’t recognise the appellation, the grape or the producer? That’s the wine soul of the sommelier screaming for you to choose the few bottles he or she has rammed into the list knowing few will pick them but wishing they would because they’re brilliant (and good for the price). Motto: go off the beaten track.

6. At the mid-to-fine end of the list, stick with the grape but switch your region or country

White burgundy, from chablis to chassagne-montrachet, is delicious but expensive whether you’re in a restaurant or not. What about switching to a South African chardonnay (the white Burgundy grape) – or even chenin blanc with beautiful texture, weight and freshness, or an equally luxe bottle of champagne and drinking fizz throughout the dinner?

Australia and New Zealand offer good value, at the fine-wine end, for those with classical palates who enjoy not just chardonnay but also pinot noir, syrah and grenache.

7. Ask the sommelier

Revolutionary, I know, to suggest asking advice of the person whose very job it is to help. But surprisingly few people do. Remember: A. State your budget when you frame the question. If you feel it’s vulgar to mention a price, simply point at a bottle on the list and say, “I’m looking at this sort of level…” B. You don’t have to take the advice if you don’t like it. A good question would be the obvious: “Which of the wines on your list do you feel offer the most bang for buck?”

And finally, a caveat

There is no art for choosing a good or, indeed, a good-value, wine from a terrible wine list. If you’re in a damage limitation situation, order cheap and ask for an ice bucket. The colder the wine, the less you will be able to taste it.

The Telegraph (London)