WINE
By Leigh Pomeroy
The wine list can be a win-win for customers and restaurants alike
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estaurant wine lists can be a daunting challenge for wine newbies and aficionados alike. For those new to the wine experience, the names on the list, except for a few, may be unfamiliar. For experienced wine drinkers, they may be too familiar, as in the same old labels one finds in most liquor stores — boring! My travels to the Colorado mountains and Seattle this summer allowed me to sample great food and wines at a variety of venues. And more often than not, I'd find myself wishing that our local restaurateurs could sample these experiences as well, in order to understand what's really possible … and what to avoid. The first point to understand is that quality should never be equated with price. For example, the most disappointing experience my traveling companions and I shared was at a very expensive Austrian restaurant in Vail Village. While the location was lovely and we were able to sit outside, only one of the dishes was truly exemplary: a slightly spicy beef and veal stew with Austrian potato dumplings served as a first course. The rest of the meal was good, not great, and one dish, a pasta carbonara, was subpar. To digress a bit: Pasta carbonara is an Italian dish of pasta with a creamy egg, cured pork, butter (or olive oil) and Parmesan (or Pecorino Romano) cheese sauce that is frequently found on menus throughout that country. However, too often non-Italian chefs cheat by adding cream, which carbonara purists roundly criticize and avoid. Unfortunately, the carbonara that was served contained cream, thus diluting the flavors of the dish, which reminded us of a lesson we had forgotten: Always ask before ordering if the house carbonara contains cream. The other drawback of the restaurant was that the wine list was outrageously expensive. The least expensive bottle was $55. Yikes! Ultimately, we settled on a Kerner, a lively white from the highly regarded producer Abbazia di Novacella, a working monastery dating back to 1142, located in the northern Italian district of Alto Adige near the Austria border. Lest you haven't heard of Kerner, don’t be embarrassed, because few wine drinkers have. It's a cross between Riesling and Schiava, strangely enough a red grape. The resulting flavors combine Riesling's citrus-tart fruit and Schiava's strawberry, Pinot Noirlike characteristics. Yet it finishes dry, so it goes well with seafood and light poultry dishes, or it's great for just sipping with antipasti. 40 • AUGUST 2021 • MANKATO MAGAZINE
Finding a unique wine like Kerner from a producer like Abbazia di Novacella was an upside. Yet the downside was that it was $60 on the wine list while the wine retails for about $20 if you can find it. Which brings me to my primary pet peeve with restaurants: high wine prices. I don't mind that restaurants charge fair prices for the foods they create because that is what they do. But they don't grow the grapes or make the wines, yet they end up with a lion's share of the profits. For example, on that $60 restaurant bottle, the winery gets only about $8 for the grapes plus production, while the restaurant gets about $54. Highway robbery. In Europe, wine is considered part of the meal, so in most restaurants (except for the Michelin-starred) wine is fairly priced. In the U.S., unfortunately, wine is too often treated as a profit source and thus becomes a luxury for the poor customer. Further, too many restaurants have what is called "corporate" wine lists — that is, they offer only wines from large corporate producers such as Kendall-Jackson, Gallo and Consolidated Brands. This is especially true for chain restaurants — in other words, big loves big. Thus, when independent restaurants could set themselves apart by offering unique wines from smaller producers, they too often fall into the same corporate wine trap because it may be convenient or simply because they don't care. In most states, customers may take their own wines to restaurants if the restaurant allows. Minnesota is such a state, though Colorado is not. In most cases, the restaurant charges a corkage fee, usually from $15 to $25. This helps both restaurants that don't want to carry a large wine inventory and customers who prefer wines that are not available on a restaurant's wine list. This is a great advantage for wine lovers like my friend John Bell, a retired winery owner, who has cases of older vintages in his cellar. In fact, he says, if a restaurant refuses to let him bring his own wine, that's a "deal killer." He just won't patronize it. So, restaurant wine policies can be tricky though not impossible. The bottom line is this: Restaurants open to expanding the wine experience by featuring a well-chosen selection and fair wine prices, as well as allowing customers to bring their own wines, actually do much better by these policies. By doing so, they attract a larger and more wine cognizant clientele who are happier for the experience. Cin cin!
