How to have your wine -- and keep the sommelier happy too

I take my own wine to most restaurants most of the time.

Most restaurants don’t like that; it cuts into their profits. But after more than 10 years’ experience, I think I’ve learned how to do it without taking advantage or giving undue offense. In fact, I think there’s a certain etiquette to bringing your own wine.

My first rule: Bring something good -- something different, something interesting.

A special bottle -- a wine from your birth year, say -- is nice but not essential. Nor do you have to take some $300 cult Cabernet or 20-year-old Bordeaux. But you shouldn’t just wander into Trader Joe’s, pick up a $6.99 special and expect a nice restaurant to greet you with open arms.

I also think you should bring something appropriate to the restaurant. Don’t take an $8 Beaujolais to a fine-dining restaurant with an excellent wine list. And don’t walk into a restaurant with a party of six and a shopping bag full of wine.

“About twice a week, we have people come in with six or eight bottles,� says Chris Meeske, the sommelier at Patina restaurant, “and that means I’m stuck at their table, opening and pouring wines most of the night, and service in the rest of the restaurant suffers.�

When possible, it seems to me, you should try to avoid bringing a wine that the restaurant is likely to have on its list. The only excuse for doing so is that your bottle is cheaper, and I don’t think that’s sufficient reason by itself, unless the restaurant is truly extortionist in its pricing.

It’s difficult to know in advance what wines a restaurant has on its list, of course, but if you bring something that isn’t in current release or that’s a bit out of the ordinary, you’ll usually be OK. I generally bring two bottles, just so I can have an alternate if my first choice shows up on their list.

The case for bringing your own

Why do I take my own wine to so many restaurants?

Several reasons.

The most obvious:

I’m often outraged by the prices I see on restaurant wine lists. I realize they have to pay for rent, storage, stemware and a sommelier -- and to compensate for money they’ve spent on wine waiting to be consumed. But too many restaurants mark their wines up way too much, and I object to wine lists that resemble ransom notes. My daddy didn’t raise me to throw my money away.

Also, I’ve found that my friends appreciate my bringing wine. They know I’ve picked it with their particular likes and dislikes in mind -- and it eliminates the time-consuming and, to some, embarrassing and intimidating ritual of consulting around the table about who likes what and how much each of us is prepared to spend.

Most important to me, the vast majority of restaurants carry only current or very recent vintages; I like wines -- even white wines -- with some bottle age, and having bought wine steadily, if modestly, since 1982, I have a fair amount of mature, ready-to-drink wine. Besides, having picked each bottle in my cellar personally, I know that if I take one of them, I’ll be able to drink something that I like and that will work well with whatever I’m going to eat.

Don’t get me wrong. I like to experiment with wines I don’t know, and at restaurants with good, fairly priced wine lists, I either leave my wine home or we drink one of theirs and one of mine. But such restaurants, alas, are the exception these days.

Most restaurants will waive the corkage fee if you also drink a bottle from their list. Some will also waive it if you’re a regular customer or if you give your waiter or sommelier a taste of what you’ve brought.

Although some restaurants have such good, reasonably priced wine lists that they consider it a personal affront when customers bring in wine, current economic conditions have forced most of them to swallow that resentment, however justified it might be.

“My attitude used to be, ‘How dare you bring your own wine into my temple of wine,’ � says Piero Selvaggio, whose Valentino restaurant in Santa Monica has more than 125,000 bottles -- more than 6,000 different wines, many in multiple, older vintages, from France and California as well as Italy, ranging in price from $21 to $9,000 a bottle. Valentino’s 155-page list has almost 100 wines for $35 or less--and there are eight pages of half-bottles.

“Still, I’ve had to modify my attitude,� Selvaggio says. “Now I figure I’d rather have you here, even with your own wine, at least eating our food, instead of having that table empty.�

Selvaggio charges $35 a bottle corkage, though he usually waives it for people in the wine trade and for those who also order a bottle from his list. He makes other exceptions as well, but he still gets angry on occasion.

“If you bring in a Ruffino Chianti that you bought for $8, I’m going to charge you the full $35 corkage because I’m insulted,� he says. “I spend $2 million on wine, and you bring that bottle in?�

A profitable twist

What’s a fair corkage charge? I think it should be the equivalent of the cheapest wine on the restaurant’s list.

Manfred Krankl -- chairman of the board of La Brea Bakery, former general manager of Campanile restaurant and himself a highly regarded winemaker under the Sine Qua Non label -- thinks $10 to $15 is plenty.

I wouldn’t object to somewhat higher charges in some high-end restaurants, but Krankl, the most enlightened restaurant/wine person I know on the subject, says corkage is “pure profit,� and high corkage “penalizes a restaurant’s best customers. It’s very stupid to make a problem out of people bringing their own wine or to have really high corkage charges.�

“Restaurants should realize that people who bring wine ... usually spend the most on food,� he says. “They probably order dessert and maybe a cognac, and they come back again and again. That’s where your long-term profits are.�

Krankl is certainly right about all my wine-toting friends. We eat out often and frequent those restaurants that welcome our wines. None of us is a “We’ll split the main course� kind of diner. Most of us order appetizers, entrees and desserts -- sometimes multiple desserts, often a more expensive chef’s tasting menu. Speaking for my wife and myself, we almost always start with a Chivas Regal (for her) and a glass of Champagne (for me), so restaurants certainly profit from our visits -- and from their enlightened corkage policies.

Given that most restaurateurs say that only 3% to 5% of their customers bring wine, I think those who do not have such policies are making a big mistake. But I think diners sometimes make a mistake, too; when it comes time to leave a tip, they don’t take into account having brought their own wine.

The waiter has to do the same amount of work opening and pouring the wine, whether it’s your bottle or the restaurant’s, and it’s not his fault if the restaurant’s wine list is too limited, overpriced or under-aged.

So I try to determine approximately what I would have spent if I’d bought a bottle at the restaurant and add 20% of that to the 20% tip I’d leave for everything else.

If the restaurant charges corkage, I might reduce my supplemental tip accordingly. But if the waiter has been especially attentive, I usually don’t deduct anything. I think the extra few dollars probably means more to the waiter than it does to me, and I’d rather err on the side of generosity than parsimony.

The bottom line on the bring-your-own-wine issue, as with so much in life, is: Be reasonable, respectful and fair. Use common sense. I think that’s pretty good advice for diners and restaurants alike.

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David Shaw can be reached at [email protected].