Wine store/bar rant

Last night I was with some friends and we ended up at a wine bar/restaurant in downtown Culver City. It’s the kind where there are several self-service stations that auto pour a 1-ounce taste when you put a pre-paid card into the machine. It’s a good sized place that is wine-focused so there is some assumption that the staff should know at least a little about wine and the machines. There was some 2003 Italian wine (don’t remember the name) that my friend gets, he smells, tastes, and says “it tastes like shit.” Now he’s not much of a wine drinker so I thought that was a pretty good technical term for him to use. I smell said wine and it’s horribly corked. I look at bottle in machine and it’s 1/2 empty already. So about 12 people have had a corked wine and no one seems to have noticed.

Me being the responsible wine drinker don’t want anyone else to pay for a bad glass. I flag down the passing server and tell her that bottle is badly corked. She grabs the bottle, a new unopened bottle, and disappears. About 10 minutes later a male employee comes back with the now opened new bottle, shoves it into the machine, looks at me and says here you go. While indicating for me to put my glass under it to refill it with new wine.

Granted I may not be the sharpest tool in the shed at times, but I quite obviously noted that there is a long hose that goes into the bottle and it is still filled with the old corked wine. I gently inform him that he needs to purge the line of the old corked wine. Yes, you guessed it, I get that deer in the headlights look from him and the words “Huh?” Tyring to remain friendly and calm I explain that he needed to purge the line to remove the corked wine from it. He stands there for about 30 seconds pondering what to do when the light bulb finally clicked and he starts purging the line.

Is it to much to ask that a wine-centered business give at least a LITTLE training to their staff?

Definitely bad form. You should email them with your experience just to let the management know. If you choose to go back and you don’t see any change, then I guess they go off your list.

UGO ??

Of course, he went. How else could he tell the story?

First, can someone over on Ken’s side of the country smack him upside the head for that groaner?

As for the OP, frankly I think a large % of people who serve wine–in restaurants, wine bars, etc.–have little to no training on what a corked bottle of wine is, how to detect it, or what to do if it’s corked…

Bruce

No, we try to avoid contact at all costs!

Yeap that’s the place

Bruce,
Normally for most restaurants I would be far more understanding, but this is a WINE-BAR Which means its focus is on wine. as such a little basic training should be required of its staff, no?

I agree with Andy that a little training would seem to be in order. Also, the purging of the line would appear to be an obvious thing to do, regardless of training level.

However, another issue is that sometimes wine does not appear to be corked initially. I’ve opened bottles before where the initial pour seemed fine. Only after sitting open for awhile did the corkiness become noticeable. So, the bottle, when initially placed into the machine might have seemed sound – especially to someone who has a high tolerance to cork taint – and become obviously corked only sometime later. If no one else complained, how would the server know?

Andy–I don’t disagree on the “should.” I’m just talking about what I’ve actually experienced, including at wine bars. Some places seem to think that if they put the bottles in one of those dispensers, that magically solves the problem.

Bruce

And according to the OP, they were correct for the first half of that bottle (and probably dozens of previous corked bottles) which was evidently consumed without complaint.

For the vast majority of their patrons, the staff is probably trained to the correct level. Does this make it right? Not necessarily, but the incentive to put time and money into training is negligible.

Sad but so true!

Sounds like he didn’t know what purging was. So many people lack common sense.

We used to have a similar style wine bar here in Napa. Purchase your card and walk around and try the wines you want. I took a walk through to see what they were about. The wines they had at the stations were either grocery store staples or complete unknowns. Two stations had “double cost” pours, which were wines I recognized as popular wines in the $30 - $40 range. The employee working was primarily helping people run their credit cards through the machine providing the tasting cards. The place had nice sitting areas, was clean and sleek. There were $9 - $16 bottles of wine, (wholesale), for $6 one ounce pours; $20 - $27 wines, (wholesale), for $8/oz and 2 $36 - $45 wines, (wholesale) for $12/oz. Tasting notes were posted at each station so the employee need not answer questions. The female attendant exhibited the IQ of a gnat.

Assessment: Owned by somebody with little or no wine knowledge. Intent was to create a self serve “wine bar” targeting young, neophytes to wine and people “visiting” wine country, with no wine knowledge, that also required minimal service.

The business made it almost one year before closing.

Which is why it’s so poorly named, no?

Here in Los Angeles, many employees would only know that term in the context of “binging and purging.”

Bruce

Paris Hilton knows what purging is, yet I would still proffer that she lacks common sense.


EDIT: damn you, Bruce; you beat me to it!

Um–m-m-m… Wouldn’t you think that the correct bottle changing procedure would ALWAYS involve purging lines? I mean… even if the wine is fine, the next bottle might be a completely different wine, or (at the least) replacing a bottle that’s been in the machine for some time. Even if it’s the same wine/same vintage I’ve got to think the lines need purging between each use. It just makes sense.

Then, again, I’m a guy who has gone into a nice restaurant where they have several bottles in similar units behind the bar and suggested that they might be interested in providing the same TLC and inert gas preservation for the other opened high priced bottles I see sitting on the bar next to the machine. I just happen to sell an Argon unit that will do the job almost as well as the expensive, closed-system unit they have already spent a lot of money on. It’s just a little scary how often I’m given the distinct impression that the expensive unit is there for show as much as anything else. The bottles that don’t fit in it don’t get the TLC.

So… a lack of training and knowledge in the correct use of these machines, or in the basics of wine quality and preservation, is not a real surprise to me.

It is definitely a bad service by the staff of the wine bar. If a person is paying for the wine then he also wishes for a good service. You can complain regarding the behavior of the staff to the concerned manager.

[quote=“andy velebil” Is it to much to ask that a wine-centered business give at least a LITTLE training to their staff?[/quote]

You might want to follow me around on sales calls to see how many places with by-the-glass programs use absolutely no methods of preservation at all… even when it’s mathematically impossible that all their open bottles turn over in the 24 or 48 hours they claim.

The unfortunate answer to your question seems to reside in the area where customers don’t know when they get a bad glass, so there isn’t much motivation for ownership to spend time and money on what they don’t feel they need. At least that’s the conclusion I’ve come to.