wine ordering question ... etiquette...

Hello,

Once, in a movie, not sure which one, the male lead was ordering wine, and when the waiter arrived at the table with the bottle to present it, the man simply said "I'll take it, thanks" (not rudely - graciously). He then opened and poured the wine himself without the waiter around and without all the song and dance, etc.

While I don't want to make it a habit, there are indeed times when I wish I could just take the bottle and send the waiter on his way - either for the sake of intimacy, or to avoid disrupting a conversation, etc.

So I have two questions:

- is this illegal anywhere ? I would hate to violate someones liquor license, etc.

- is this considered rude or bad wine etiquette ? Or is it just rare ?

Comments ?

[Robin Garr]

- is this illegal anywhere ? I would hate to violate someones liquor license, etc.

- is this considered rude or bad wine etiquette ? Or is it just rare ?

Arone, welcome to the forum! I will move your question into the general wine section, where you're likely to get a lot more answers.

Briefly, though: I can't imagine any circumstances where it would be illegal to take your wine in a restaurant without undergoing the ritual.

However, there are some practical reasons for at least an abbreviated form. This is your best chance to check whether something is so badly wrong with the wine that it should be sent back, and the procedure is intended to give you that chance. The most common flaw detected at this point is a "cork-tainted" wine, a problem caused when a bad cork imparts a moldy, musty, mushroomy odor that masks the good flavors of the wine. If you detect something like this, you have every right to send it back.

In practice, the ritual can seem intimidating, but you can certainly abbreviate it. When the server pours you a sample, don't make a big deal out of it. Take a quick sniff - you don't even have to taste - and assuming it smells okay to you, just nod or say, "it's fine."

This would probably be less hassle for you in the long run than trying to persuade the guy not to pour you a taste, simply because some people don't deal well with changes in their routine.

Arone,
Welcome. I am in agreement with Robin with one extra comment. It is important that you let the waiter open it and pour you a small sample. Smell it, no need to taste it, and if it smells like wet cardboard it is a "corked" bottle. At this time I tend to want to tell the waiter "Please sit it down and let it breathe, we will pour". This is a tired topic but just this weekend I took a nice '96 Thunder Mountain Cab to a local country club. The waiter proceeded to pour all but a few ounces in four glasses. The glasses were big so it did not look that bad but everyone got at least 5 oz before dinner and when dinner came the wine was pretty much gone.
Walt

I don't think there's any true etiquette problem, nor would I imagine a legal issue (though in US with the arcane wine laws who knows).
But I agree I wouldn't do this, because if bottle was flawed (whether corked or cooked or secondary fermentation or whatever) one would have already accepted it. Another thought- every once in a while with older bottles, a cork is basically sawdust. I'd much rather the waiter have to deal with it than me - if I bored through a cork, doubt restaurant would replace. Not a common occurence, but it does happen.
Now once bottle is presented, confirmed, opened, smelled, and accepted, I HAVE said "just leave it, I'll pour."

I spoke to someone on the phone at a restaurant in Anne Arundel County, MD who told me by county regulations, customers are not allowed to drink any wine that the restaurant doesn't pour. I'm not sure if she was just ruling out "bring your own" or saying that customers cannot even pour a wine from the restaurant winelist that they have ordered. She said the same did not apply in Annapolis proper.

Every jurisdiction has its own arcane liquor laws, but I believe in Alberta the server must open the liquor. I'm sure other places have a similar requirement.

Once the bottle is open and we've tested the wine, we usually just ask the serve to leave the bottle so we can pour for ourselves.

Arone,
Welcome. I am in agreement with Robin with one extra comment. It is important that you let the waiter open it and pour you a small sample. Smell it, no need to taste it, and if it smells like wet cardboard it is a "corked" bottle. ...

I would quite happily accept a screw capped bottle without a taste. There is still the problem of a cooked bottle of course, but in a restaurant situation I would imagine this is not too likely.

I would quite happily accept a screw capped bottle without a taste. There is still the problem of a cooked bottle of course, but in a restaurant situation I would imagine this is not too likely.

Arone, Neil is a devout man - a believer in bottles with screw caps. (New Zealanders might lead the whole world in acceptance of screw caps.) Folks with other religions recognize that wine flaws can originate from sources other than corks. And it stays fairly cool in Auckland, even in summer, so he would not normally find a cooked wine (one that had felt high temperatures and been negatively effected) in a restaurant. But in warmer climates, restaurant wines can be ruined by hot storage conditions and they can arrive at the restaurant already cooked.

Covert, you are right of course. But even here in Albany, New Zealand, the temperatures are around 27-28 C at this time, quite high enough to cook a wine in an hour or so in a locked car. February is the hottest month. Around 19-20C now, at 11pm.

The only advantage in tasting before pouring is that it is more convenient to reject a wine after a small taste. I see no reason why a wine should not be rejected after pouring into one or more glasses. Surely pouring does not imply acceptance in any formal contractural sense.

Arone,
Welcome. I am in agreement with Robin with one extra comment. It is important that you let the waiter open it and pour you a small sample. Smell it, no need to taste it, and if it smells like wet cardboard it is a "corked" bottle. ...

I would quite happily accept a screw capped bottle without a taste. There is still the problem of a cooked bottle of course, but in a restaurant situation I would imagine this is not too likely.

I would still want to see a small amount in a glass, not necessarily to taste. You can tell more about oxication, cloudy, corked and most normal defects by smell and sight. The problem I have with taste is that the question is not do you like the wine, it is whether it is defective. I am also not a fan of screw cap fine wines, fix the TCA situation (which can and is being done) and you will not have to solve an entire other group of problems with screw caps but that is a dead horse that is a seperate issue.
Walt

Covert, you are right of course. But even here in Albany, New Zealand, the temperatures are around 27-28 C at this time, quite high enough to cook a wine in an hour or so in a locked car. February is the hottest month. Around 19-20C now, at 11pm.

Albany to Albany, you are a gracious and mature gentleman, Neil. I tried to snooker you into a "so-do-you" repartee re my religion with cork so that I would have a lead-in to proselytize. Glad you didn't bite; I'm tired of hearing it, myself.

The only advantage in tasting before pouring is that it is more convenient to reject a wine after a small taste. I see no reason why a wine should not be rejected after pouring into one or more glasses. Surely pouring does not imply acceptance in any formal contractural sense.

I have called back the waiter some time after accepting a wine, and told him it was bad. And had it changed without problem.

I think the damn ritual is stressful -- they often pour too small amount and then they're there standing over you while everyone is watching. Its easy to miss a borderline off wine, or think maybe its your mouth out of taste, or bottle stink or whatver, and then with a decent measure and some reflection you realise that it is a bad'un.

In my local restaurant I tell the waiter to just pour the wine.

I have also returned a wine "late" - with suitable apologies for giving the waiters extra work.

These days, if I have any doubt about the wine when I taste it I usually say so, and try to be clear about the level of doubt I have to allow a suitable response from the restaurant. If there is a decent sommelier I am always happy to dicsuss whether it is indeed a fault. Oh, and my wife, like me, is also very sensitive to cork taint, so her second opinion is sometimes useful.

IME something like 90% of wines shout out of the glass "I'm OK" when I check them, and the whole ritual is dispensed with very quickly. A few percent shout "I'm corked", and again the ritual is simple. It's the other few percent that is most vexing - when you are not sure, or you think it is something that might blow-off.

Hello,

Once, in a movie, not sure which one, the male lead was ordering wine, and when the waiter arrived at the table with the bottle to present it, the man simply said "I'll take it, thanks" (not rudely - graciously). He then opened and poured the wine himself without the waiter around and without all the song and dance, etc.

While I don't want to make it a habit, there are indeed times when I wish I could just take the bottle and send the waiter on his way - either for the sake of intimacy, or to avoid disrupting a conversation, etc.

So I have two questions:

- is this illegal anywhere ? I would hate to violate someones liquor license, etc.

- is this considered rude or bad wine etiquette ? Or is it just rare ?

Comments ?

Hi, Arone! You'll find very few places on the planet where you can't yourself pour the bottle of wine for which you are forking over dough - even in the US of A.

As to the corked thing with which so many of the mavens (and wannabe mavens) seem to be obsessed, well it's all relative.

At the risk of sounding like myself, let me quote from a piece I wrote a little while back for eGullet, about another war, in a galaxy far away:

Not all libations were potable. Nowadays, whenever I find myself drinking some Rumpolian plonk, I hearken back to the day we'd been lost for most of the day on an S&D and had run out of water. Not good. Hyperthermia is not a pretty thing. Some guys were vomiting and most were cramping. We hadn't seen the sky for hours, and the Hueys above couldn't find us to drop us water, despite the several smoke grenades we'd set off. Then, there it was -– eau de vie. We stumbled out of the jungle into a rice paddy. Like everyone else, I plunged face-first into the sludge and drank deep. These paddies were fertilized with just about every kind of mammalian excrement: Chateauneuf du Poop. Parasite Paradise. It didn't matter in the least. There are priorities. Let's just say that today I'm tolerant of corked bottles of wine.

As to the corked thing with which so many of the mavens (and wannabe mavens) seem to be obsessed, well it's all relative.
///today I'm tolerant of corked bottles of wine.[/i]

So someone who runs restaurants thinks that spoiled bottles of wine are ok? I suppose that we should be tolerant if we order a steak "blue" and it comes well done?* It's ok if the lettuce is mostly brown? After all, I went days without eating when I was homeless, so it's all relative, right? Personally, I don't judge experiences in restaurants by whether I have ever had worse experiences, I set the bar a little higher.

Ye Olde Wannabe Maven

* I personally tend to order "blue" or very rare in good steakhouses, rare in less specialized places. I only send back in latter if it is medium-well (a little pink) or doner. But like overcooked pasta or (unintentionally) wilted greens, a medium steak is not a good sign.

Arone,
Welcome. I am in agreement with Robin with one extra comment. It is important that you let the waiter open it and pour you a small sample. Smell it, no need to taste it, and if it smells like wet cardboard it is a "corked" bottle. ...

I would quite happily accept a screw capped bottle without a taste. There is still the problem of a cooked bottle of course, but in a restaurant situation I would imagine this is not too likely.

I would still want to see a small amount in a glass, not necessarily to taste. You can tell more about oxication, cloudy, corked and most normal defects by smell and sight. The problem I have with taste is that the question is not do you like the wine, it is whether it is defective. I am also not a fan of screw cap fine wines, fix the TCA situation (which can and is being done) and you will not have to solve an entire other group of problems with screw caps but that is a dead horse that is a seperate issue.
Walt

I would always want to look at and smell and taste the wine in a glass - quickly and without fuss but a definite look, swirl, sniff and taste.

And it may be very rare but it certainly isn't unknown for screwcapped and other non-cork-closed wines to be infected with TCA and there are all the other problems [leaving reduction aside] that can stem from winemaking, transportation and storage so I wouldn't exclude a screwcap from the simple routine.

As for pouring thereafter it depends on the restaurant and the waiters but I wouldn't hesitate to pour my own wine if I thought it would improve things. I don't do it often though and would regard it as a bit of a failure if I felt I needed to do it in a top class restaurant.

As most others here, I let the waiter open the wine so I can approve it and then get them to leave it without pouring (often an uphill battle) so we can pour our own.

Something I hadn't even noticed until a waiter commented on it, is that I don't always bother tasting the wine, I sometimes just smell it and then approve it. If there is a flaw it is usually TCA and nosing shows that up, while tasting won't tell you anything except whether you happen to like it or not (which isn't grounds for refusing a wine).

The only advantage in tasting before pouring is that it is more convenient to reject a wine after a small taste. I see no reason why a wine should not be rejected after pouring into one or more glasses. Surely pouring does not imply acceptance in any formal contractural sense.

I have called back the waiter some time after accepting a wine, and told him it was bad. And had it changed without problem.

I think the damn ritual is stressful -- they often pour too small amount and then they're there standing over you while everyone is watching. Its easy to miss a borderline off wine, or think maybe its your mouth out of taste, or bottle stink or whatver, and then with a decent measure and some reflection you realise that it is a bad'un.

In my local restaurant I tell the waiter to just pour the wine.

Peter
You've put perfectly, what I was about to say... i.e.
- We've also sent wine back after initially passing it in the ritual
- Yes it's stressful, even (or maybe especially) for experienced wine enthusiasts ... the shame of calling it wrong!
- It's a deeply flawed ritual, which probably adds the most stress to people approaching wine as a prospective enthusiast.

I'll also add that it's stressful on the other side of the fence, for the wine waiter (or normally the waiter) having to sniff the wine after a customer has rejected it and make a decision. For some, their experience with flawed wines is pretty poor and they're often concerned at contradicting the customer if they think it's ok. I've certainly had a waiter come up after the event and say they initially hadn't thought it corked, but smelt it later and realised it was.

The sooner we can eradicate TCA (and whatever other faults we can eliminate), the less of an issue this process will be.

Here's a gentle troll... A wine enthusiast and forumite elsewhere helped out at a restaurant of a friend for a while. He offered to smell/taste for the customers if they preferred, as he was pretty sensitive to cork taint. A good idea / offer?

regards

Ian

Here's a gentle troll... A wine enthusiast and forumite elsewhere helped out at a restaurant of a friend for a while. He offered to smell/taste for the customers if they preferred, as he was pretty sensitive to cork taint. A good idea / offer?

I noticed at Le Manoir aux Quat' Saison the sommelier having a sample of each bottle before it arrived at the table. In addition to offering a sample to the customer. Can't remember how it fitted into the ritual though. He was doing it away from the customer tables. Assuming the sommelier has good sensitivity to faults[1] I think it is a good idea. Knowing how wines should taste increases your chances of spotting a dodgy one, and trying a sample from each bottle opened certainly should teach you that. It also helps when recommending wines.

Oh, and I too have rejected a wine after it had been poured for the whole table. It is quite disruptive to have glasses removed and replaced, and go back to square one with the sniffing, but the restaurant (hotel actually) did it without complaint.

[1] Knowledge of wines does not necessarily come with sensitivity to faults. I know an MW who refused to acknowledge a wine as being corked when it clearly was so to me, one or two hacks above borderline, and a number of others at my table thought something was not quite right.

One further comment. When you nominate someone to taste the wine, it is silly to have the guy that is hosting do it because he is paying or the new guy because it will be an interesting experience for him.

The ONLY person to choose is the guy that is most sensitive to TCA! Send that canary down that mineshaft.....

Although I agree that the appearance and nose will almost always tell you everything you need to know about whether the wine has a major fault/s I would still always taste the wine poured for several reasons.

On the other hand one might expect the sommelier or a competent waiter to spot those too and hopefully before the wine is offered for inspection.

My main reason for tasting is that not all significant faults are so major that they can be detected by nose alone. Sometimes a taste simply confirms the fact that the wine, particularly an expensive one, is not good enough whereas the nose might only have suggested the possibility of a problem. Sometimes the nose will exaggerate a problem [not TCA which is obviously not the only fault worth rejecting] which will blow off leaving the wine appropriately drinkable.

Low level TCA can be borderline on smell alone but the fruit is still usually blunted and stripped to a level that is unacceptable particularly when it is a wine that one knows well. A taste allows the problem suggested by the smell to be confirmed or rejected.

Heat affected wines quite often present the problem in the taste rather than the smell unless it is the maderised variety.

And if one has asked the sommelier for a recommendation with a clear idea given of basic taste requirements, say re acidity and dryness/sweetness in a white wine, it would be important to taste the wine - and reasonable to reject it if a clear requirement had not been met e.g. the wine had excessive residual sugar when the request had been for something dry.

Or a red wine was flabby because of a lack of acidity or excessively tannic due to its youth when a desire for the opposite had been expressed.

In summary IMO it seems more reasonable to reject a wine after tasting it even though there might always be the suspicion that the rejection has then been based on simply not liking it – which I agree is not a reasonable basis particularly if it was your own choice. I accept that most rejections will be obvious from the nose but I suspect that to reject a wine without tasting is likely to make a potentially difficult situation worse.

One should always be prepared to explain the reason for rejection to the sommelier who will no doubt ask.

Finally, either I have been very lucky or sloppy, because I have rarely had to reject a wine in a restaurant. TCA and oxidation have almost always been detected before the bottle has been brought to the table and since my wife cannot drink red wine, our restaurant choices are generally a familiar selection of white Burgundy, Bordeaux, Loire or Champagne.

As to the corked thing with which so many of the mavens (and wannabe mavens) seem to be obsessed, well it's all relative.
///today I'm tolerant of corked bottles of wine.[/i]

So someone who runs restaurants thinks that spoiled bottles of wine are ok? I suppose that we should be tolerant if we order a steak "blue" and it comes well done?* It's ok if the lettuce is mostly brown? After all, I went days without eating when I was homeless, so it's all relative, right? Personally, I don't judge experiences in restaurants by whether I have ever had worse experiences, I set the bar a little higher.

Ye Olde Wannabe Maven

* I personally tend to order "blue" or very rare in good steakhouses, rare in less specialized places. I only send back in latter if it is medium-well (a little pink) or doner. But like overcooked pasta or (unintentionally) wilted greens, a medium steak is not a good sign.

Nah, Dale, it was my experience operating restaurants from 1971 to about 1995 - biggest wine list around 400 bottles - (I don't do it anymore) that very, *very* few bottles of wine were in fact corked. I would say - strictly anecdotal here - that maybe one out of 25 said to be so actually was. What has been mentioned here was more often the case. Somebody stepping off into an unknown land. (I myself am pretty sensitive to this phenomenon, despite my writer's license above.)

*very* few bottles of wine were in fact corked. I would say - strictly anecdotal here - that maybe one out of 25 said to be so actually was. What has been mentioned here was more often the case

Even the cork industry admitted to 2-3% corked. I'm in middle (or possibly slightly to insensitive side) and get 4-5%. Comparatively few bottles get sent back in restaurants. I am sure some wines are sent back as corked that are not (either they have another flaw that is misidentified, a customer who doesn't like the wine uses corked as an excuse, or they are a jerk making a powerplay). But the idea that only 4% of bottles sent back as corked are actually corked defies belief.

I've sent 3 bottles back in restaurants in the last maybe 5 years. In each case the difference with the new bottles was dramatic. Most recent here:
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=6032&p=47404&hilit=blue+hill+stone+barns#p47404

As to "pretesting", as upper end restaurants with serious wine service I generally expect the sommelier to sniff wine before offering. They may or may not taste.

I agree that knowledge of wine is not necessarily associated with TCA sensitivity. I've been to tastings (including trade tastings) where distributor rep blithely poured horrendously corked wines.