Tasting the components of the dish before it is composed and plated is much different than sampling the finished product at the table.
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It’s the same thing. It’s sampling the product in advance and making sure the guest has a seamless experience. The only real difference is the fact that they can taste food in the kitchen without “shorting” your portion whereas there’s no way for them to sample a 750ml bottle of wine without siphoning off 20-30ml. It would be nice if producers started bottling 775-800ml bottles for restaurants, but that doesn’t seem likely…
as I said earlier a lot of people I know haven’t had similar experiences.
@JDorris @MChang I have always had a great experience and have visited easily over 20x and as recently as last week.
Having a few more years of marriage under my belt, I’m going to help you stay out of future trouble 
This is better phrased as “my wife (then girlfriend) and I…”. 
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I’m glad you said it, I immediately heard my wife’s voice, “EX GIRLFRIEND?”
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Kind of like the winemaker coming to the restaurant and taking a bite of your meal?
Fortunately my (now) wife gets my sense of humor and she calls me her ex-boyfriend
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My wife prefers it when I refer to her as my roommate.
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My wife loves it when I introduce her as ‘my first wife’ !
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Don’t let me yuck your yum. If you love it, by all means enjoy.
This was my experience:
1992 Raveneau Clos : DOA
1993 Raveneau Clos: DOA
1980 Rousseau Clos de Beze: DOA
1991 Rousseau Clos de Beze: Mediocre at best
1990 Roumier Amoureuses: Good bottle
1991 Chave Cuvee Cathelin: Good bottle
1996 D’Auvenay Criots Batard Montrachet: Absolutely amazing
When we told David about the Raveneau being dead, his comment was “what do you expect from 90’s chablis”. I’ve had the wines several times and I frankly expect fireworks.
The idea that the cellar there has continuity is a myth. Things have been sold off and reacquired in recent years. That said, with more current wines you’re fine. With older wines, caveat emptor. You’ll have better luck with bottles bearing the blue cellar stamp that are hopefully original purchases.
If it’s a restaurant that won’t take back bad wine, it doesn’t matter how many people have had good wine there to me.
Impossible for a restaurant to serve wine without ever serving a flawed bottle.
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I heard about a restaurant (can’t say its name, as will be understood later) with a very attractive wine list. I made a phone reservation and asked to make sure that the attractive wines were still available. The lady checked with the sommelier and indeed 3 out of 4 are available. I asked to keep two of them for us.
We arrived at the restaurant for lunch. Beautiful and large restaurant that is part of a spacious estate. We arrived a few minutes early. When I said my name, they asked me to wait for the owner of the estate who asked to meet me (we were early?!). We waited and an older and impressive man arrived and immediately started a conversation with me about fine wine. Apparently the “research” I did on the phone reached his ears. He told me that he has a large private collection, which later turned out to be impressive. He told me that the restaurant has decades of nice allocations in Burgundy. He is lonely because his wife died and the children come to visit twice a year and he can’t drink that much. As a restaurant, he is not allowed to sell the coveted wines. As the conversation developed, the employees seemed quite surprised, and my wife was patient, knowing how important and interesting the matter was to me. I sensed that the owner of the estate was enjoying the conversation, and not just me. Then he invited me to see his wine cellar. We walked outside the restaurant and arrived at an old building. We went down two floors. An electric door opened. I looked inside and almost passed out. He reviewed the various areas before me. The majority was Burgundy and the sorting was by producer, wine and year. It was exciting because the collection of the reputed manufacturers (Rousseau, Roumier, DRC, Raveneau , etc.) was quite complete. You could see that the wine does accumulate over the years, and that there is room for more. He sensed that I was excited and offered me to take some bottles but on the condition that he(!) would load them in the trunk of my car. No problem. I picked a few favorites of mine, and we quickly agreed on the price. He went to the car and I went back to the restaurant. He arrived after me and insisted, to everyone’s astonishment, on personally pouring us lovely wines during the meal, while exchanging information between the two of us from time to time.
What an experience!
And I forgot to mention that the food was excellent, of course.
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Was there last September for our anniversary. They use a caveat emptor policy on older wines (forget vintage cutoff-maybe 2000). Also wines are not the deal they used to be. Ended up getting a relatively young bottle of Allemand for a reasonable price, but all the fancy burgundies with age are likely 4 digits and at your own risk with proper age.