Wine Lesson #7: How To Order Wine In A Restaurant (Part 2/2)

LESSON #7: How To Order Wine In A Restaurant In this lesson we take a break from technical wine knowledge to discuss a few useful ideas that might help you to enjoy ordering wines in a restaurant.

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HELPING RESTAURANT TO HELP YOU ORDER RIGHT

Don't feel intimidated if you don't recognize some wines on the wine list. This is a good thing. It means they have wines that you have not tasted before.

But it also means you'll need some advice from the server.

Ironically, to get help, you first have to give help. Start by giving your waiter some clues about your personal tastes.

For example, do you prefer a wine with full intensity or something lighter? Are you particularly thrown off by acidity - tartness - or do you hate astringency and bitterness?

Are you happier with higher alcohol or something less "hot"? Continue to give him examples of wines you drank before that you really like.

Ordering the right wine is a result of team work between a customer and the server. These clues really help the restaurant recommend a style of wine compatible to your palate. At the end of the day, both sides win.

LEARN YOUR VINTAGE

Vintage variations - quality differences between same wines from different years - make ordering wine trickier than food and other beverages. If you find a good restaurant that offers a great wine list with more matured wines from say 15 to 30 years of age, you would need to know your vintages.

Don't be surprised to find the price of the same wine doubling between one year and another. That's perfectly normal. There are pocket vintage charts that you can purchase; bring them with you when you shop for wine especially when you travel abroad where the selection is so much bigger and more exciting.

Ordering wine in restaurants is a vastly different experience from shopping in a wine store. Restaurants begin where shops leave off.

Shops sell either cheap wines for immediate quaffing or fine wines for you to lay them down for 5 or more years before drinking at their peaks.

Next time you visit a venerable wine restaurant, order older wines, the kind that you don't get in shops.

The restaurant price markup is a fair reward for their patience, care and financial burden for nursing these bottles for so many years just so you can enjoy them at their primes.

Price markups for young wines are more difficult to swallow since the restaurant did little to increase its value for you.

Next lesson: About the Wine Grape Chardonnay

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Source: Wine Lesson #7: How To Order Wine In A Restaurant (Part 2/2)