Bringing Your Own Wine to a Restaurant? Here’s How to Do It!
Have you ever brought your own bottle of wine to a restaurant? No, not to significantly save on the bill, but to share that special bottle with friends and drink it with an extraordinary dish. Not everyone knows it’s possible.
Bringing your own wine
To begin with: not every restaurant is open to the idea of you bringing your own wine. At the local casual restaurant, they’ll probably blink in surprise. Most people who want to bring their own wine have a special (and expensive!) bottle in their personal wine collection that they would like to drink on a special occasion and with a specific dish. Do you want to dine out with your own favorite wine? Keep these points in mind.
Ask beforehand
Pulling a bottle out of your inside pocket in the restaurant: no, that’s not the right way to do it. Ask in advance whether the restaurant is open to you bringing your own wine. If you then show up with a gem from your wine collection, not every hospitality entrepreneur will be applauding. So: no is also an answer. Restaurants with a sommelier and an extensive wine list will probably appreciate it. Not done: bringing a wine that they also have on their own list.
Tell them which wine it is
Useful if you want to drink the wine with a specific dish: let them know which wine you plan to bring. That way, the chef can take it into account when preparing your dish or at least advise whether the combination you have in mind works reasonably well.
Pay corkage
‘They eat you poor and drink you rich’ is a well-known saying in the restaurant world, because an entrepreneur earns more from drinks than from food. In most cases, you’ll pay ‘corkage’ for bringing your own wine—a fee to compensate for the income the hospitality entrepreneur misses out on. Sometimes corkage costs as much as a bottle of house wine; sometimes it’s a fixed amount.
Nothing cheap and nasty
You pay corkage and ask the restaurant for permission: of course, you don’t go to that trouble for a liter of supermarket house wine. Bringing wine makes sense if it’s something special. What probably won’t work: bringing that bottle of sweet white wine for your mother-in-law because she doesn’t like any other wine. Maybe they can serve her Rivella in a wine glass?
Let them taste it
You’re sitting in a special restaurant and have brought your special bottle. Don’t be stingy, then, and ask whether the sommelier would also like to taste some of your wine. Not during working hours, of course, but if you really have something beautiful under the cork, they’ll be happy to try it.
