WSJ...The Reserve wine list

and some comments from Scott Manlin

My friend Scott Manlin, a wine collector turned restaurant owner (Ceres’ Table, in Chicago), never ordered from reserve lists during his collector days and doesn’t have such a list at his place. “Paying a two- to four-time markup for a wine…seems a poor choice in a world filled with delicious (and far less precious) wines,” Mr. Manlin wrote in an email, adding that he regards reserve lists as “anachronistic” and rather snobby.

Interesting - to be honest, I don’t know that I’ve ever felt that the wines on a reserve list were any more egregiously marked up than the wines on the regular list, and if you want a serious bottle of wine with a given meal, it’s good to check out the reserve list if the restaurant has one, IMO.

As an aside, and I’m sure I’m in the minority here because she comes across as a truly nice/pleasant person, but I find virtually all of Lettie’s wine commentary to border on vacuous. Then again, she does write for WSJ, so the bar for wine commentary has been set pretty low there.

I also didn’t realize Scott had opened a restaurant - I was just in Chicago a couple weeks ago, and if I had known I would have checked it out.

This why corkage exists

It’s not that the bar has been set low, the audience isn’t say, the WB crowd, and a little extra spoonful isn’t a bad idea to maximize readership. I talk to people all the time who are big wine drinkers, and have no clue about wine.

I’m seriously confused on why restaurants have 2 lists. Makes ZERO sense to me.

Do they size you up before you come in and say “that guy will NEVER see the Reserve list…”?

You have to print the pages any way. Why not just keep all the Cabs and Pinots and Chard together? God forbid someone in a t-shirt and jeans orders the most expensive bottle on the list…

While I think it is silly, my bet is that one of the reasons for the “reserve” list is it gives it the air of exclusivity. Which in turn makes a certain type of customer desperate to spend large sums of money to show how “special” they are.

I think that restaurant reserve lists are as much a marketing strategy as anything else. If I owned a steak house, I can, pretty much, guarantee that I would have a reserve list. I really want that guy who thinks that the epitome of fine dining is a steak house and who thinks that his search for great wine ends with Silver Oak to really think that he is being pampered and his level of life appreciation exceeds those who chose their wines off the regular list. I want him to feel that a diner of his wherewithal and with his exquisite taste should only order off the reserve list. I would also make sure that he saw that he can order the 1991 Napa Valley Silver Oak at 3 X (current, not release) retail price.

I am pretty sure that most wine board regulars scoff at the idea of a reserve list. In fact, I know that a very large percent insist on BYOB and will not order off any kind of restaurant wine list. There is nothing wrong with those philosophies.

I have become a bit more sympathetic with columnists who have to crank out an essay every week (or month or whatever). So, I am willing to let most of the stupid comments pass.

A local restaurant has two lists. It’s a Grand Award winner, and the reserve list is large, heavy and unless you have a good idea what you are doing, incredibly intimidating. The other list has been chosen just as carefully, and as most of people eating there either want something by the glass or cheap and cheerful, it’s perfect for them.

Has the price of the '91 Silver Oak actually increased since release ?

Interesting topic. To be honest I thought reserve lists were a thing of the past. I managed a fine dining restaurant in the mid 90’s where we put the Gaja and Giacosa on the "regular list ". Restaurants that would normally feature a reserve list are also going extinct.

Some of the examples above are not really “Reserve” lists. What Mark brings up sounds like more of an attempt to make the list manageable to most clients.

As Ian alluded too, in this day it’s silly to assume who does or does not order expensive wine.

I was at a nice but not especially expensive or fancy restaurant in Staten Island a few years ago for a client dinner. The had a ridiculous magnum of something sitting upright at the Maitre D’ stand. I don’t recall exactly, but it was something like Monfortino. When we were leaving, my client introduced me to the owner and I asked if the bottle was real. He said yes and I asked why he was ruining the bottle by leaving it where it was. He said that was the difference between a wine collector and a restaurant owner. He said I was worried about ruining the bottle. He said he was interested in selling wine and then asked me how many bottles of the wine do I think he had sold because people saw it sitting there. You can’t sell wine from the reserve list if you don’t let people know it’s there.

I always enjoyed reading Lettie Teague. I have fond memories of her writing about The Collector, and it wasn’t Scott.

Buying wine in restaurants is for chumps (not trying to be a troll). If I can bring a $40 Carlisle that would retail at $100+ (a reserve list wine) or a Maybach or Schrader retailing at $300 - $700 (a reserve list wine to be sure), why would I pay those over-priced restaurant prices? I know we’ve discussed this before, but for now, I’ll gladly pay the corkage to drink my (good) juice.

I did enjoy the article.

In the interest of full disclosure, I should declare that I oversee several wine lists for a small restaurant group. None of them have Reserve Lists. On the contrary, taking a page from Veritas in New York City, at my higher-end restaurants I offer a “Market List” of relatively inexpensive bottles, mostly fun, oftentimes off-the-beaten-path wines that sometimes get lost and need a little love.

That said, for a couple reasons, I don’t think Reserve Lists are a bad idea. Above all, recent research has shown that they are effective. But perhaps more importantly, Reserve Lists allow restaurants to net high-end sales without intimidating the sort of diner who upon seeing more than a few wines with three or four figure pricing, decides the list isn’t for him (or her), puts it down and orders a vodka and tonic or draft beer.

What unquestionably sucks is ridiculous markups on Reserve Lists - or any wine lists. At the one restaurant in my career where I did offer a Reserve List - one where I had the pleasure of serving Mr. Kramer several years ago - I kept all of the wines in that section in the ballpark of retail pricing. I even sold Cristal at cost - about $70 under retail at that time - just for the heck of it. But not everyone can do that; not everyone can be Passionfish. As much as restaurant markups get bashed on this board - and for generally good reasons - the reasoning behind them is often more complicated than many realize.

One quick example: the 2011 Faust that Ms. Teague complained about. While I am sure some discounting took place at the wholesale level at some point - I don’t sell the wine, so I don’t really know - the June 2014 pricing I happened to have on my desk for this wine in my market showed its cost as being $45. (And, for what its worth, my market tends to be a little cheaper than NYC). So maybe the sommelier or wine buyer (or just an overworked restaurant manager) bought it at $45 - or more - and put it on the list at $110 (less than 2.5x what he or she paid for it, not bad for a restaurant paying rent in SoHo) and then gets blown up for doing so in a newspaper with two million readers… Or maybe not. In fairness, it is certainly possible the buyer got the wine at $25.99 and is raping his or her guests. I certainly don’t know - nor does Ms. Teague - just like I don’t know why there is a retail store less than an hour away from the restaurant in Jersey selling the same wine for over $75.

And if you come through Chicago, Ceres Table is a great little spot

Would love to but my state does not allow corkage. And the markup is generally 2.5-3 x retail because of that.

Hmmm! Just think Dan, you might get a decent wine at one of the restaurants …

Here in Ohio, where corkage is illegal (not only suitably consumer-unfriendly, but completely opaque to me as to the benefits it presumably offers distributors and/or retailers), there is at least one restaurant in my area which uses their ‘reserve’ list this way: the regular list consists of a reasonable selection of wines offered at the usual 3x markup, it tops out at around $60, while the reserve list offers about 15 additional choices from around $80-$110, (all red, I recall) but which are sold at retail plus just $15. So…you can spend $60 on a $20 retail wine, like most restaurants, but if you are willing to spring for $80, you get a $65 retail wine! The reasoning is apparently that they are willing to max out their margin at $40-50 in order to actually sell the more expensive bottles. I always order off the reserve list.

It’s my understanding that The Collector would never buy a bottle from the Reserve list.

BHOM

The reserve list is for the business account. 80% of the purchases are Silver Oak and Caymus.

I agree. You don’t want the average guy customer who might consider a $35 of wine with dinner to open the list, see a pages and pages of wines that go up in price to $500, $1000 or more, and just close the list. Depending on the restaurant and the clientele, I could definitely see doing two lists, though I probably would find a different way to label them than “reserve.”

Perfectly said.