Ordering the "second cheapest" bottle of wine.

[stephenc]

Homer Simpson swears by this little rule of thumb. As do thousands of value-minded Brits. The common thinking is that buying the cheapest bottle makes you look like a cheap bastard, but buying more expensive bottles, is well, expensive.

Thus, the compromise is to buy the second cheapest bottle of a variety on the menu, which keeps you from appearing cheap, but also makes you appear value-concious.

But it seems that restaurants have caught on to this little rule, and some actually price the bottle that they want to get rid of as the second least expensive.

Therefore, it then seems that the best way to dine economically, is to order the cheapest bottle, or the third cheapest bottle!!

Anyone else subscribe to this rule?

[NeroW]

Nope. I buy the first cheapest.

[babyluck]

I did, until now...

[malcolmjolley]

I remember reading about this in Esquire (I think) in the early 90's, when I was young and impressionable. Either Jim Harrison or John Marianni described the reasoning behind the practice (as their father had taught them):

The owner will always have a cheaper bottle he/she likes for friends, etc.

Is that right?

[tjaehnigen]

Heck no.

I BYOW and pay a corkage fee whenever possible. When I cannot, I but what I like, up to $50 or so. Unless I am at a destination dining establishment where BYOW is not allowed and/or illegal. There, I buy what I damn well please, but looking for the hidden Easter Egg of the list when possible.

[viaChgo]

Usually I have a price in mind when ordering & hope to find something I've had before or recognize/read about. But when I don't know any of the wines on the list, I usually pick the varietal I want in the price I want to pay and ask the Sommelier what they think. Usually they will either agree w/my choice or if they recommend something else, they usually pick something in my price range because I've basically shown them what I want to pay. I've tried a lot of good wine this way.

[Carema]

There, I buy what I damn well please, but looking for the hidden Easter Egg of the list when possible.

This occurence of easter eggs in these threads is disturbing to me. I knwo it is some sort of allusion to techy things on computers I do not understand. One should not have to unearth nor search for treasures on a wine list, they should be staring you in the eyes, unblinking at every price point.

[John W.]

OK. So I went to Citronelle with DonRocks. He ordered. We had a bottle of Chateau de Amouresses CDR 2001 for $35. Citronelle. $35. What's wrong with this picture? Could be the cheapest red. The home of $100+ tasting menus, and the the guy (our dear Mark Sommelier) has the cojones to put a delicious $35 bottle of Cotes du Rhone on his wine list. The stuff is out there, it just takes someone with the skills to find it. And to put words in Mark's mouth, he doesn't really care if it's $35, it's a good bottle of wine.

[Duncan]

I tend to ignore most of the cheapest wines and all the expensive ones and go for moderately priced compared to the other bottles on the list. So at an expensive restaurant I'll be expecting to pay more.

I realised that this was what I did when a few years ago I caught myself doing it in a restaurant in France: the most expensive bottle on the list was about the same as a cheap bottle in the UK, and I was about to go for a bottle in the lower half of the available prices. Nowadays I try to work on the basis of paying a similar amount for wine in a restaurant in France as I would in a restaurant of similar quality in the UK, and as a result I tend to get much better wines.

One exception to this is a local restaurant down the road from where I live. I know he takes care over choosing his house wines (and has a good range of them), so I'll often just go for a house wine even though its the cheapest.

[Christopher]

A friend of mine in the car sales business responded to the statement "We want to spend $X,000" with "I don't sell money, I sell cars."

I have the same feeling when it comes to putting together a wine list. It is just that, a wine list. It is not a price list.

But money is an object* and one has to have wines that are approachable for many budgets. Happily, there are many very good wines that can go on a list for $20-$40. The aforementioned Chateau de Amouresses CDR 2001 is an example.

Where one gets into trouble is trying to put a square peg into a round hole. That is, trying to fill a price point with a wine, or style of wine, where the best examples are $40+. One can show the Amouresses 2001 at $35, but one may not be able to show a Chateauneuf du Pape for that fee and it would be irresponsible to propose a "less than" CNDP just to fill a price point.

And this is what gets misunderstood. I can certainly show you a White Burgundy for $40. I cannot show you a 1985 1er Cru Meursault for that fee.

So, to answer the question of the original post - no, I do not subscribe to this theory nor any other theory that tends towards mind reading the restaurant's pricing strategies. Nor do I care how I am perceived, I have no interest in controlling their opinions of me. My interest is to drink delicious wine with my meal, whether it's the house pour or a reserve selection.

*A syntactical pet peeve is when someone uses the phrase "Money is no object." Money is always an object, it is not always an obstacle.

[Busboy]

I have heard, and experience seems to confirm, that bottles on the very low end of the wine list often have higher markups than other bottles -- and that the very high end often presents lower markups -- because the restaurant has a bottom line amount it needs to earn off every bottle sold. I can't speak to wholesale pricing, but a wine list that sells bottles at about twice retail has always seemed fair to me. That means that the $20 bottle goes for $40 on the wine list, giving the restaurant $20 in cashflow plus whatever the difference is between wholesale and retail. The $5.99 low-end bottle, however, becomes a $20 bottle because the restaurant needs to make more than $6/ a bottle to stay in business. The $20 bottle may cheapest wine, but it may not be the best value.

On Easter eggs, I don't think that sommeliers bury the best values, rather, it's their relative obscurity that lowers demand and makes them better values. Before Parker ruined it all, there were a bunch of unclussified and underclassified Bordeaux, for example, that were almost as good and dramatically cheaper than the first and second growths. New wineries from California sometimes are great values before they catch on (Groth). And anything not made in France, Italy or California is more likely to offer a good value, if you're willing to comb through the list, listen to your own taste and not the "expert's" and talk to person who put the list together.