Dining out over the holidays, I was reminded there is a good reason the server presents a bottle of wine before opening it. Though it may appear to be merely another formality in the oft-times pompous ritual of serving wine, the presentation is for your own protection. It may not be exactly the wine you ordered.
This was driven home to me recently when I asked for the 2005 Nicolas Potel Nuits-Saint-Georges at a restaurant that boasted it had received a Wine Spectator Award of Excellence. I had thought the Award of Excellence implied a modicum of wine expertise, but this experience taught me that is a poor assumption.
The waiter returned with a bottle of the 2005 Nicolas Potel Bourgogne, which I promptly rejected. Not because it’s a bad wine (in fact it is quite good for a Bourgogne) but because it wasn’t the wine I ordered. In the hierarchy of Burgundy classifications, Nuits-Saint-Georges is a village wine and thus a step up in quality from the basic Bourgogne appellation.
There are exceptions, which I will delve into in a future column, but the pecking order is fairly straightforward: Bourgogne, Villages, Premier Cru and Grand Cru; Bourgogne being the floor, Grand Cru the ceiling.
If the waiter had acknowledged the error and gone to retrieve the correct bottle, this would not be an item of interest. It’s easy to grab the wrong bottle when two wines are from the same producer and essentially look the same. To my utter surprise and consternation, the waiter insisted he had delivered the wine I ordered.
So we looked at the wine list and, sure enough, it listed the Potel Nuits-Saint-Georges. Yes, yes, yes, the waiter insisted, this is the Nuits-Saint-Georges. No, no, no I said, or words to that affect.
Then he pointed to the fine print at the very bottom of the label, which indicated the wine was produced in Nuits-Saint-Georges. No, no, no, I shot back, or words to that affect. That does not mean this wine is a Nuits-Saint-Georges. That is only telling us the Nicolas Potel cellar is located in the village of Nuits-Saint-Georges.
This is akin to listing the Hess ‘California’ Cabernet Sauvignon as the Hess ‘Mount Veeder’ Cab because the winery is located on Mount Veeder.
The label clearly stated Bourgogne – in very large letters. This is the classification, I explained, and it means the grapes could be sourced from anywhere in the Burgundy region. If it had been the Nuits-Saint-Georges, it would say so, in large letters placed exactly where ‘Bourgogne’ was printed on the bottle before my eyes.
Eventually the owner came out to join the debate. Same drill. He insisted the Bourgogne was the Nuits-Saint-Georges. Then he proclaimed that he sold at least a case of this wine every week and customers loved it, as if consumer ignorance validated his position.
No, I told him, that only meant he had successfully perpetrated a fraud upon the public. I didn’t really believe he had deliberately tricked customers. I think he just didn’t have a clue. At this point I simply gave up, ordered a Sanford Santa Rita Hills Pinot Noir for roughly the same price as the Nicolas Potel Bourgogne, and vowed never to return.
I did learn a good lesson, though: When ordering wine in a restaurant, don’t assume you’re getting what you asked for. Read the label!
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