Sending wine back at a restaurant?!
Sending wine back at a restaurant?
There have been a variety of posts recently about sending wine back at a restaurant, and the consensus appears to be that if the wine is faulty, it should be sent back and the restaurant is obliged to replace the bottle with one that is free of taint.
However, does it matter if the wine you order is a rare and expensive one, like say Mouton 1945 or Cos d'Estournel 1961? If the $2500 bottle turns out to be corked or oxidized, will the restaurant really absorb the cost?
Answers:
In general the more expensive and rare the wine, the more serious and knowledgeable the restaurant and their staff will be. These places are extremely customer oriented and their business is built upon and depends on their reputation. They won't only take back a bad bottle regardless of the price but will insist on making it right! You don't find $2500 Moutons at the the Burger Barn.
The same is true of wine from a shop or broker as well. It's only really at auction where the policy of caveat emptor (buyer beware) is the reality. Occasionally you hear of some extremely old and rare wine (like from George Washington's cellar) being sold for $20,000 only to have it opened and found to have completely spoiled at least 100 years ago (no refunds - sorry).
The worse is the restaurant (whose business is based on location like in a hotel or a tourist spot) that has a wine list of extremely overpriced crappy wines and no one there who knows a thing about wine. In this case you are often dealing with just a bunch of employees who wouldn't know a corked wine from a skunky beer or a flat cola.
Too often in my younger days I would find myself with a wine that was not necessarily bad per se but of too poor quality or just a bad selection for my meal because the staff had no knowledge to provide to guide my selection. Many a time I would balk at paying $85 for a $30 bottle of wine, and choose one listed for $45 (worth about $15) only to be terribly disappointed. Worse still is the obligatory 15% tip on that overpriced wine when they had done nothing to earn it.
Even in those cases I have on occasion sent the wine back and selected something else (often more expensive than my first choice) without any complaint from the management. Usually however I just drank (or not) the disappointing juice feeling it was my choice and thus my fault.
If a restaurant serves gourmet food they need a chef not a fry cook. If a restaurant is going to have a sophisticated wine selection then it is their responsibility to have the trained sommelier and responsible business practices.
Yes they will.
They damn well should with a price tag like that.
This is the point. if you are ordering an expensive wine and it has turned you send it back for another bottle which you hope has not turned to vinigar.
Well, they won't like it but the manager will probably try it to see if it was corked. If it was then they will apologize and not charge you for it. If they believe it wasn't, more than likely they will try to explain that to you. If it's a decent place, they shouldn't make to big of a stink. They probably will just because of the price. If they do make a stink and the wine was bad. Raise your voice a little so people around you can hear that the restaurant doesn't store their wines properly and they're making you pay for it. It will shut them up.
If the wine is truly bad, the restaurant will talk to the distributor to see who is going to absorb the cost. The distributor will talk to the wine maker. All those involved from production to the table are responsible for the quality of the product - not the consumer who ordered it.
You got to be careful. Most people haven't worked in the back of a restaurant but I have family that has owned one. If you are to big of a jerk you can bet your *** that a cook used your plate as toilet paper. It's safest just to eat in so you know whats happening to your food.
This is a risk restaurateurs face when serving anything.
If the restaurant bought the wines on their initial release and has stored the wines themselves they should assume the risk.
The 1961 Cos for which they are charging $800.00 probably only cost them $8.00 in 1963. No big loss.
If, also, they purchased the wine fully matured, the oneness again is on them to verify that the wines have not suffered any abuse along the way. They should not really hold the consumer responsible to pay for the spoiled or tainted wine.
No restaurant should charge a customer for any product brought to the table that is inedible/drinkable...should they?
The resturaunt sends the wine back to the distributer and gets it replaced free of charge if the wine has gone bad. They are paying for a product just like you are and expect it to be satisfactory. Sending a wine back is generally because its gone bad (turned to vinigar) is not something you should hesitate to do.
Absolutely - that is the gamble they take. The whole cork presentation is the process of making sure the wine is of serving quality. This regularly happens when sommeliers serve older and more expensive red wines.