How To Order From a Restaurant Wine List

First Rule: Do Not Read the Wine List

Knowing about wine doesn’t make you a better person any more than knowing about classical music, art, or theater does. So, yes, knowing about wine totally makes you a better person.

Those of us who do know about wine enjoy boring you with every fact we’ve memorized. We combine the worst parts of IT guys with the worst parts of rich people.

So as a public service, I’m going to teach you how to order wine at a restaurant here on Substack, where you don’t have to talk to me.

---

If you are handed a wine list that’s more than half a page, do not even open it. It’s not for you. It’s for horrible people. People like me. Wine Guys.

Put the wine list down. Ask for the sommelier. Every cell in your body will resist doing this because you know, correctly, that you are about to lose 15 minutes of conversation with the people you chose to go to dinner to a lecture from a stranger. Asking for the sommelier makes as much sense as looking into your lover’s eyes during sex and saying, “Let’s take a break to watch a Ken Burns documentary!”

When the sommelier comes over, say that you want these things:

• one of the least expensive bottles on the list

• something you’ve never had before

• a bottle that they are excited about 

• wine that goes with what you’re all ordering 

Unfortunately, these are the exact phrases that will excite the sommelier most. And when sommeliers get excited, they talk even more. Nothing you can do will make this shorter. So you might as well try to be curious about their take on the grape, climate, soil, and if you’re particularly unlucky, battles over that soil.  

You can and should stop reading here. You don’t need to know any more. This system will get you a great, almost-reasonably priced bottle. But if you want to know why this system works, continue. But it’s going to be as painful as listening to that sommelier.

---

• Expensive doesn’t mean better
  Is a Louis Vuitton purse better at pursing than a $50 purse purses? I have no idea. But I do know that people will overpay a lot for the prestige of Burgundy or Champagne. Prestigious doesn’t mean better. It means rarer, or more expensive to make. Just because the porterhouse is the most expensive things on the menu doesn’t mean you’ll like it more than the braised short ribs.

• This is not the time to splurge
  American restaurants have outrageous markups on wine. That $90 bottle costs $30 in a wine store. Try something great at home. 

• Learning about wine is too hard
  Wine isn’t something you memorize and are done with. Learning about wine is like keeping up with restaurants. Sure, the very top European ones tend to stick around, but the rest are constantly changing. Some regions improve their quality. Wineries get new owners. It rains too much sometimes. Who cares?  

• Sommeliers often make their favorite stuff cheaper
  In order to trick you into listening to them talk about their trip to Hungary, some sommeliers will vastly undercharge for the new wine they’re excited about. One sommelier told me he could afford this because he marked the crap out of the sauvignon blanc by the glass, since people who order “a glass of sauvignon blanc” deserve whatever hell befalls them.

• Wines taste different depending on the food
  There are sipping wines people enjoy like cocktails. People who do that are the sauvignon-blanc-by-the-glass morons. Most of us drink wine with dinner. And each wine will taste differently depending on what you eat along with them. You can safely pick a wine from the same region that invented your dish. But better to let the sommelier, who has thought about the menu already, do this math   

• You don’t know what you like
  You took an online quiz and went to a tasting and decided you’re a Napa Cabernet Sauvignon person. It’s fun to tell people you’re a Napa Cab person. You order it all the time. It gives you an identity. It also makes you an idiot. Do you only eat one food? Is that food hamburgers? If so, keep ordering that Napa Cab. For the rest of us, we like a bunch of stuff. And we like a variety of wine.

 And another thing people don’t realize about wine…