Article on Finding Specific Wines in Stores

[Schneier]

Dara Moskowitz writes the weekly restaurant review column in The City Pages, the Minneapolis free weekly magazine.

This week's column is about why you can't find the wine you enjoyed at a restaurant at your local wine store.

Dara is a good writer, and this is a good essay.

Bruce

[Mark Sommelier]

Yes, much of what she says is right. There are plenty of wines that only sell to restaurants. Newton was the first. Now there are lots of them. Most of them are really small, like Littorai.

[Phil Ward]

And the good news is that many of those, including Newton, that were skewed towards On Premise, have now begun to be seen more at the Off Premise level.

Edited October 24, 2003 by Phil Ward (log)

[Bux]

I think it's always good news when you can get what you want, where you want it, but it's not necessarily bad news that you can get something special at a restaurant that will heighten the pleasure of dining there. Dara's 1,3 and 4 reasons are just good reasons to go out to eat at a good restaurant and enjoy it. There's no point in crying over the fact that you can't get the same wine at home unless you've already managed to get the same food at home. If you can cook better than the restaurant can, well then I guess they need some gimmick to stay in business. Reason 2 is just a good reason to stay away from bad restaurants. Besides if the wine is bad, you don't want it at home, although if you're eating at those restaurants, it's possible you don't know the wine is bad and then there's a bigger problem than just not being able to get overprice bad wine at home. Reason 5, is common sense. The world's a large and largely uncontrollable place. The cure for illogical distribution of wine falls below the radar when I think of problems that need to be cured.