Why you should always order the CHEAPEST bottle off the wine list in restaurants
Restaurant critic Jay Rayner says that he's not intimidated by wine lists - and that you should always opt for the cheapest bottle to avoid getting ripped off
DINERS should always order the cheapest bottle of wine on the list because restaurants make it too complex and overpriced.
Wine connoisseurs can be too snobbish, according to restaurant critic Jay Rayner, who says he refuses to be intimidated by lists.
Speaking at the Cheltenham Literature Festival, according to , he said: “Wine lists are fraught with problems but mostly because of the b------- spouted by wine connoisseurs. They irritate me profoundly.”
He then recalled an incident that took place at a Michelin starred restaurant in central London, where diners pay up to £2,990 for a bottle of premium red wine.
When he asked the waiter if he could find a bottle of Pinot Noir for £50 he described how he had looked at him like he was “some kind of scum on his heel”.
In fact, there was a bottle for just £49. Mr Rayner added: ‘I do not hold to being intimidated by anything in this life and if a wine list irritates you just buy the cheapest on the list and tell them all to p*** off.’
When asked if it was better to drink house wine in restaurants and leave the expensive stuff at home, he said he would “absolutely agree”.
Restaurant wine mark-ups are a notoriously grey area, with no regulations or official guidelines.
Drinkers have long grappled with the markup charged by them.
In the past, wine expert John Downes has claimed that some eateries charges two-and-a-half or three times as much as the retail price.
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He gave an example of an £8 bottle of Chablis being sold to diners for £37.
However, restaurant owners claim that it’s necessary to make money from wine because margins on food are so tight or even non-existent, that they need to cover the cost of wine glasses, washing and the salary of the sommelier in top dining spots.
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