Oops, thanks: ordering house wine, drinking expensive Bordeaux
Everyone who works makes a mistake now and then, and there are certainly no saints working in the hospitality industry either. But pouring an extremely expensive bottle of wine for a table that ordered house wine is not something you should do too often. ‘Taking that exclusive wine away from the guests really wasn’t an option,’ says the manager of the restaurant that made the blunder. ‘But this joke is costing me two thousand dollars.’
Restaurant Balthazar in New York is an expensive restaurant, with classic French bistro dishes on the menu and an extensive wine list. A young couple ordered the $18 pinot noir, one of the cheapest wines on the list. The wine was poured into a carafe to give it some air, just like the extremely expensive $2,000 bottle of 1989 Mouton Rothschild ordered by a group of businessmen at a table a little farther away. And that’s where things went wrong: the carafe of liquid gold went to the couple in love, while the businessmen got pinot in their glasses. Intriguing detail: at first, neither of them noticed that they were drinking the wrong wine.
Lovely, clean house wine
‘The young couple joked with each other that they were drinking a very refined wine,’ the manager of restaurant Balthazar tells wine magazine Decanter. They weren’t far off, because they were toasting with an exceptionally exclusive Bordeaux. The businessmen, at the table next to them, were also very pleased with their red wine. ‘Lovely and clean,’ they called it. But when the manager told them a mistake had been made, they said they had already been surprised by their Mouton.
Expensive joke
A second bottle of Mouton was opened for the businessmen. And did the young couple have to hand in their expensive wine? No, taking away that carafe was not an option for Balthazar’s manager. ‘The two were extremely happy with the mistake; they said it was as if the bank had made an error in their favor. Unfortunately, in this case I’m the bank: this little joke is costing me two thousand dollars.’
