Since writing about wine service issues following a recent dining-out experience, I’ve heard from several readers about their own frustrations with wine service in restaurants.
Reader Thomas Sammons writes:
“Too true about confirming the proffered wine’s identity (and dealing with clueless staff). I had this happen recently when at a local restaurant I ordered an Italian wine advertised as “#85 on the Wine Spectator’s Top 100 List.” When it arrived I noticed that it was by two years a more recent vintage. The list at this restaurant does not have that many good choices, so I gambled on the producer and had the wine opened. Suffice it to say that the wine we drank would not have made the top 100 list for Chianti, let alone Wine Spectator’s (top 100 for the world).
“But this restaurant regularly commits a more grievous sin: Bringing red wine to the table at 70-plus degrees. And one night I actually had to argue with the waiter that, no, the faux-marble sleeve meant to keep white wines cooler will not take 15 degrees off of a bottle of warm red wine.
“We go through the same routine at each visit: I order wine, it arrives warm, I request a container to put the wine, water and ice in, they search around for something (they don’t have ice buckets!), we finally work something out, and 15-20 minutes later my wife and I can try a glass. Which is less time than it takes to travel to a place with good wine service. And it is a good thing that, however strenuously obtained, a glass of wine invariably puts me in a better mood.
You have undoubtedly written on warm wine in restaurants, but it is a subject worth revisiting.”
Indeed, this is another of my pet peeves. But Thomas has the solution. Ice buckets for red wine!
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