The wine list for any hotel or restaurant offers a significant opportunity to drive sales. However, it is also often the most intimidating aspect of a hotel restaurant. Often times, restaurant managers or food and beverage directors allow their suppliers to dictate how many wines they carry, which is a huge mistake. While certain flags will sometimes dictate wines that must be carried, there is still generally some flexibility in the overall list. For our purposes, though, we are going to assume you have the flexibility to develop your own list.
Start with the Food
Ultimately, the wine must pair well with the food on the menus. When developing a wine list, I always liked to work backwards from the menu. Knowing what taste profiles complement the spices and sauces used in the food preparation ensures the guests will have several options for each and every dish on the menu.
In some instances, though, taking a contrapuntal approach works even better. The best example of this is with spicy crabs. I always recommend a sweeter wine with this dish because both elements make you crave the other. A Gewürztraminer or sweet Riesling calms the tongue down from the spice, but also makes you crave another bite of the spice. Then, the spice on the crab makes you want another sip of the wine to calm down the heat. It is truly a match made in heaven.
This aspect of the wine list is something that should be done in conjunction with the Chef. You don’t have to nail down the actual wines at this point, but you need to understand the taste profiles of the food and how the chef wants to accentuate each dish. As long as you come out of this portion of the wine list development with the idea of what wines you want, you are in good shape.
Varied Price Points
After the profiles are set, it is time to sit down with the supplier to work out the actual wines. Again, for the best results, have the Chef sit in on the tastings. The supplier should have the taste profiles you want to try and have several offerings for each one. Ideally, you want a bargain, a medium-priced wine, and a premium brand.
These wines should be tasted on their own but also with the food to ensure a harmonized pairing. This is obviously something that cannot be done in one sitting. In fact, it is something that should not even be attempted in one sitting. My experience was the taste buds start to go after four or five wines, so keep this in mind when scheduling the tasting sessions.
Keep It Manageable
A wine list should not read like War & Peace. Overwhelming guests is far from the best way to sell more wine. The list should be shorter in nature, with concise descriptions of the wine. The wines should also be broken down by type, region, and vintage. A list of 30 to 40 bottles will serve most restaurants very well. It is also a great way to keep your stocking costs down as well as ensuring you have enough of every type of wine rather than just a few bottles each of 100 different labels.
More by the Glass
If guests are unfamiliar with a restaurant or wine list, or ordering different types of food, it is far easier to get glasses of wine on the table than it is a bottle. Keeping a smaller wine list enables you to offer more wines by the glass. Keeping the list under 30 bottles would allow you to actually serve every wine by the glass, but you would need a wine preservation system to do so.
When offering wine by the glass, make a show of it just as you would when opening a bottle. At several locations, we made a wine display in the main dining room featuring all of our bottles. Servers were trained on pouring glasses of wine and did so right at the table for the guest. This not only gave the appearance of better service but also ensured the guest they were getting the actual wine they ordered.
Pricing
There are a lot of schools of thought here, with many resulting in overpriced wine that doesn’t move. We always priced out our liquor and beer so we could offer reasonably priced wines. Draft beer literally costs pennies and liquor markups are accepted much better by guests than a $10 bottle of wine being priced out at $40.
Everywhere I worked that had success in selling wine worked off three possible pricing models:
Bargain Wines (purchase price $5-$20) – bottle price x 2 + $2
Medium Wines (purchase price $21-$40) – bottle price x 2 + $5
Premium Wines (purchase price $41+) – bottle price x 2 + $10
Customers know wines are going to be marked up, but it must be reasonable if you want to move bottles out of the wine cellar. Furthermore, they don’t mind buying a bottle if it is not going to break the bank. It is worth a point or two on the overall liquor cost to get more money into the register at the end of the day.
Pricing for glasses will depend on how many ounces are being poured. You want to incentivize buying a bottle, but no so much that you are discouraging them buying wine by the glass. Because glass pours are sometimes more generous, it would be recommended to price it out at four glasses per bottle for the glass pour price. This gives some room for error for the servers and bartenders and this will actually help the liquor cost.
It is a lot to digest but understand a wine list is a big source or pride for any restaurant or hotel. It is not something that should be thrown together overnight like a high school book report. Having a perfect list takes time and effort, but it will pay off in the long run.
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