I have the pleasure of living in San Francisco – a place in which patrons can bring bottles to almost all restaurants. Yes, there’s usually a corkage (typically $15 - $25) fee, but I accept that gladly. So, I bring bottles to restaurants very frequently. As a lover of nicely aged wine (for me that means bottles from the '80s or '90s usually) I often bring these older bottles.
Here we run into problems. At most restaurants in my experience – even very high end ones with an experienced somm – the wait staff has no idea how to open these bottles. In the last couple of years, I’d guess that (way) over 50% of the time they struggle with the corks, break them, and have to end up shredding or pushing them in. There’s the typical search for a straining tool of some kind. In one place I had to ask the waiter not to pour my bottle through a cheese cloth. It’s pretty frustrating to see this happen over and over again.
Waiters in restaurants always want to open the bottles. I understand they see this as part of their job. Some have even said that they are required to by law (which I really doubt). Many are utterly baffled by the cork that comes apart when they give it a casual tug, as if they’ve never seen this happen before – and maybe they haven’t.
Leaning on this august and experienced group – how do you all deal with this? What are you best and worst stories? I have many ways of dealing with this, but perhaps you all have techniques that I haven’t thought of for navigating these waters. TIA!
What wines are you bringing? If it’s ca cabs…then it’s the corks fault, not the Somms! They are sawdust, and require a Durand. Of which I’d bring with me…and request using.
Pull the cork out with an Aso and insert a composition cork just before you leave for the restaurant. OR offer your Aso to the waiter to open the bottle. The last alternative is the all in one wine bag. When you are seated, set the bottle on the table along with the tools from the wine bag: Aso, flashlight, cork retriever and filter funnel. If they don’t get the hint, at least you have the tools you need to save what you can from their attempt to open the bottle.
It shouldn’t be too difficult to find out what the law really is. Try to find the regulations written by the Alcoholic Beverage Control people. Or talk to someone who teaches classes for the alcoholic beverage server’s permit. Then print out a copy of the regulations and carry them with you. Then insist on opening your own bottle.
Phil Jones
I live in the South Bay and never ever let the waiters open my wine (never let them touch it until opened). Never been in issue here or in LA. Can’t say I dine at michelin star restaurants often though. I generally bring a small bag with tools and wineor a larger bag if multiple bottles and spare stems. Generally I will tell them I have wine and discuss the corkage and then when they disapear to get stems I pull the bottle out and open it myself. I have had issues before where as you say they insist on opening it and f it up. Now I don’t give them the chance. Works well for me and I could care less what they think.
I’m in CA too and just take an Ah-So with me when we are opening an older BYO bottle
I have yet to run into a waiter who insists on opening a bottle when I note the age, and the special tool.
However I have bumped into waiters who claim they can’t serve an already uncorked/recorked bottle.
In that case, if I was going back to that place, I’d just remove the capsule, and use my standup pull to fully reinsert the cork so that it looked untouched.
Rich, as you know, we open most of our wines at most restaurants. If you have a Durand, I’d bring that, and insist on opening it yourself. I think it’s the rare restaurant that believes (I’m sure incorrectly) that they have to physically open the bottle themselves.
Lots of good advice giving me confidence to just do it myself (after a polite explanation, or like Sean when they are off getting stems).
Alan – I meant more the situation with a small group, just bringing one bottle. Certainly with a big group and a dozen bottles the situation is quite different.
Bringing a Durand yourself is the way to go. I’ve found most of the wine restaurants in San Diego do not have them or even know what it is, but it’s always fun to see a server’s reaction to using one for the first time.
Bear in mind that 99% of what servers open in their careers are current releases. They really have no experience with older wine, and you are correct in assuming that they see serving the wine as part of the job. To many good servers, you opening and pouring your own wine might be as weird as you expediting your own entree and running it to the table yourself.
I think the best way to deal with this is to call ahead and let the restaurant know what you are bringing and how you would like them to help with it. Last year a good friend and client hosted a 70th birthday dinner for a mutual friend with birth year wines. The venue was a good local French bistro, and we arranged everything in advance, including letting them know that I would be handling opening, decanting, etc. I offered to train staff on how to handle opening corks and decanting older bottles in the process (helps that I’m known locally ITB), and some took me up on the offer. (Funny note, I once got a desperate call from a local Steakhouse with a newly promoted staff that needed a guide over the phone to opening an 18L bottle of Cabernet for a party - it worked out)
When I actually worked the floor, it was at an ex-WS Grand Award Winner with deep stocks of old California wines with dry crumbly corks. I learned to make a show of decanter and candle service at the bar. Selling one old bottle and putting on the show of opening and decanting usually sold a few more old bottles, which was a fun ordeal.
And sometimes corks just suck. I remember opening a late-80s Dominus in the early 00s at an EBob OL that was perhaps my greatest ever cork surgery - not quite pure sawdust, but close, and I got this cork, crumbs and all, free of the bottle, and then promptly poured a taste and realized the wine was DOA.
I announced “Ladies and Gentleman, the surgery was a success and the patient is dead.”
I have two strategies 1) bring Durand with you and make a show of showing the staff how to use it (teaching moment with a gadget it is unlikely they have used before) or 2) remove capsule and cork and replace with Vinolok (handy to save from bottles finish with them i.e. Austrian whites) at home and don’t say anything, acting like that’s the way it came. The first method only works once per restaurant but both save face and you get clean wine.
Many CA restaurants believe that it is against state law to do so (the actual law seems to be unclear from various people who have tried to investigate it).
99% of the time I will open the wines myself. The only local restaurant I frequent that annoyingly refuses to allow that is, of all places, Racines. So I make a point of pulling the corks on all my bottles beforehand if I’m eating there.
Also, I bet a lot of these folks are using waiters friend corkscrews, and the thread on many of those isn’t that long. They’re fine for short and moderate length young corks, but they can make a mess out of more fragile older corks, particularly if they’re long. That’s true even at home. I’d never use one of those with an older wine.
Whatever the law may be on serving a previously opened bottle, it seems harder to envision that the law would prohibit the patron from opening the bottle on premises instead of the waiter.
I would just do it in advance. If they claim that they can’t serve an already opened bottle, I would say you didn’t realize that and offer that next time won’t open it in advance. My guess is that 90% of the time they’ll just say “ok” and go ahead and take your bottle. If not, tell them you’re an attorney familiar with the liquor laws, and there is no such law about serving opened bottles…and if they still won’t do it, then give them a backup bottle (that you HAVEN’T previously opened), and don’t ever go back to that restaurant again.