This is one of the most gross and ugly scenarios that exists in the American culinary scene today: if you can’t make money on your patrons with your food, then gouge and pillage your customers on wine prices. I’m being nice with my word choice.

Like all of us, I have heard the arguments about why a restaurant has to charge two or three, or more, times retail for their wines. They have to buy it and store it thus incurring inventory costs, they have to wash wine glasses, they have to pay for wine service, they have to . . . PLEASE!

In Austin, Mirabelle Restaurant is consistently one of the best and busiest food establishments I know of, due to the fact that: a. dishes are created around the wine, as opposed to trying to find the wine to pair with the menu; b. one of the owners, Michael Vilim, is a wine maniac, and he really knows wine (he’s also a sommelier, sits on the Board of the Food & Wine Association, etc); c. every single wine on the menu is excellent; and d. every wine is priced at, or close to, local retail prices. Also the food is truly excellent. What is wrong with this business strategy? Nothing!

It does not matter what time of day or night or what day of the week, this restaurant is always busy! So why would a restaurateur attempt to continue operating with a very outdated business model? Before there was competition, restaurants could get away with charging two or three or more times retail for a bottle of wine. And as our consumer population becomes more educated, it is ever less acceptable for restaurants to continue with this practice and is beginning to show itself publicly in the form of an outcry from people that love wine.

The other effect of gouging is that restaurants often must have rather poor quality wines on their menus just to have some ‘reasonably priced’ selections available. So as a consumer, you may see the equivalent of a bottle of Yellow Tail on the menu for $30 that you just saw at the grocery store for $8. Would you really spend $30 for a bottle of wine you know will not be enjoyable? Most people won’t. And if you get into the $150 range, you can probably find something decent but you know that you could buy two or three bottles to take home for the same price. The math just doesn’t add up any way it’s looked at.

Wine service is another sore spot, not only with me, but apparently thousands of others according to Wine Spectator’s survey on the subject last year. I have had numerous quantities of numb sommeliers (and to be fair, a few good ones, but mostly in the Big Apple), many too young to have a clue that ‘61 was an incredible vintage for Bordeaux, yet alone anyone that has tasted great and classic wines – sadly, sommeliers can rarely afford to drink fine wine so like retailers, they just have to schlep the wines that will put the largest amount of bucks into their accounts. I don’t blame anyone for wanting to line their own pockets, but it is a fleecing of the unsuspecting populace that I object to. I whole-heartedly agree that consumers will fare much better by becoming educated about wine – almost across the board, restaurant wine lists are for suckers.

I’m all for exploring new wines – it is practically a second career for me but ultimately the very best value in restaurant wine is to just pay the bloody corkage fee and bring something you know you like.

David Boyer classof1855.com

PS I have no financial interest Mirabelle Restaurant whatsoever