There are plenty of threads on corkage, but I couldn’t find a good discussion on overall guidelines for newbies - if there is one please feel free to point me in that direction. I’ve never brought wine to a restaurant before, but now that I’ve been accumulating more and taking more of an interest in wine, I’m interested in doing so. That said, I feel a bit hesitant - I don’t want to be a bad customer for restaurants! To be transparent, my motivation is just to drink better wines at restaurants but stay within my budget, so this is not a case of bringing collector level wines. Is there anything wrong with just bringing a solid California cab or pinot to a local restaurant? I know corkage is common so I would assume it’s perfectly reasonable to BYO, but for some reason it feels uncomfortable to me.
As a tangible example: going to a local steakhouse with a few friends where we’d probably order a round of cocktails and then one bottle of cab in the $60-90 range off the menu to drink with our steaks. I have some Kinsella Spencer vineyard cab at home I wouldn’t mind bringing a bottle of (it’s not on the restaurant’s wine list, which is very limited). Do people think about how much they are costing the restaurant based on the corkage fee vs what they might typically order, or am I overthinking it.
Are there guidelines in terms of what “level” of wine to bring, i.e. is it not cool to bring a wine that retails for say $40-50? Other than avoiding something directly on the wine list, is it considered bad to bring something that’s just another napa cab instead of something more differentiated from the broad offerings on the wine list? And how much do people’s answers depend on the type / price of the restaurant (e.g. local mid-range bistro vs very expensive michelin type place vs typical steakhouse)?
For the purposes of this discussion I’d be curious to hear views setting aside COVID, and then if you think the latter warrants a different approach feel free to mention (I’m definitely less inclined to do my first corkage until things are better, but again, I don’t have a great feel for how it’s viewed by restaurants).