Bringing your own wine to a restaurant is an act that, in some contexts, is a bargain-basement move. But if done right, it can be the height of sophistication.
Let’s start with the low end. Consider Philadelphia. It’s not just a teeming college town: It’s a city packed with restaurants that cater to the college crowd. Inexpensive food is only part of that equation. Many student-friendly restaurants advertise that they are BYOB: Bring your own bottle. No small number of Philadelphia spots put “BYOB” in the name of the restaurant. Thanks to the culture of the city and the peculiarities of the local liquor licensing laws, many hip, new Philly restaurants have a bring-your-own policy.
But to return to the lifestyles of the young and short on cash, the final B in the acronym “BYOB” is just as likely to stand for “box” as it is for “bottle.” You know it’s a college haunt if there are underage diners with boxes of Franzia (“the world’s most popular wine”) Sunset Blush on the tables.
Savvy wine drinkers are no less price-conscious than those whose wine-like mystery liquid comes in cardboard. It’s just that their focus is on maximizing the quality of what they’re getting per dollar. Dylan York is a principal at the Sommelier Society of America. He points out that in New York City these days, the common markup on wine in restaurants is 300%- 400%. A bottle that you might get at a wine shop for $50 will be somewhere between $100 and $200 on a good restaurant’s wine list. Spend that $200 with thought and care at the wine shop, and you’ve got something really worth drinking.
There is an etiquette to bringing one’s own bottle. Don’t bring plonk. But you knew that. Don’t bring a wine that the restaurant has on its own wine list. Call ahead to talk to the sommelier to make sure the restaurant allows you to bring your own bottle, discuss how you would like it served (to decant or not to decant?), and make sure the “corkage” fee (what the restaurant charges to serve you your own wine) is reasonable — which is generally $20 to $30. It’s good form, if there are more than two of you at the table and your party is drinking more than one bottle, to buy one bottle off the house list. But the most important thing is to invite the sommelier to join you in tasting the wine, especially if you’ve brought something rare and old.
York explains that even with the markup, few restaurants can afford to stock wines with much age on them. That means sommeliers don’t get that many chances to educate their own palates with vintage wines. The customer who brings something special and shares it quickly becomes a valued customer.
Travel guru Rudy Maxa rarely buys bottles off a restaurant’s wine list. That’s in part because he has filled out an enviable cellar over the years and in part because of how little he cooks for himself. “I eat out four to five nights a week,” Maxa says. “If I didn’t take a few bottles with me, I would never get a chance to drink the wines I’ve collected over decades.” Restaurants aren’t annoyed, Maxa says. Rather, they are flattered that it is their food with which you have chosen to pair your exceptional wine. Like York, Maxa points to the importance of sharing a glass with the sommelier. If she knows her business, she will be much more interested in tasting a wine that she’s never had than in trying to sell you off the house list.
This Valentine’s Day, my wife and I have a dinner reservation at a restaurant with an admirable wine list. But we will be bringing our own — a cabernet, now at its drinkable peak, that we bought years ago on an early anniversary trip to Napa, California. It’s not only a good bottle. It’s one with sentimental value. I hope the sommelier enjoys it as much as we will.
Eric Felten is the James Beard Award-winning author of How’s Your Drink?
