It can be intimidating to order wine at a nice restaurant.
ADVERTISEMENT
You should always order the wines you've never heard of — here's why
Restaurants know that people are more likely to order familiar wines, so they take advantage of our insecurities.
Crémant d'Alsace. Tintilla. Côte-Rôtie.
If you're like me, these names mean nothing. They look fancy, and that's about all I know. If I'm at a restaurant, my eyes are likely to gloss over these names and be drawn instead to the cabernet sauvignon, the malbec, or the pinot noir.
I'm certainly not alone.
ADVERTISEMENT
It turns out restaurants know that people are more likely to order the familiar wines, and they take advantage of our insecurities, according to Bianca Bosker, the author of the best-selling book "Cork Dork."
Bosker left a job as a journalist a few years ago to join an elite class of wine experts known as sommeliers. She chronicles her epic and often tormenting quest in her book, which is full of tidbits about how the mysterious world of wine works. (Full disclosure: I worked with Bosker when I was an editor at The Huffington Post.)
According to Bosker, who worked as a "cellar rat" at New York's L'Apicio restaurant, you'll pay a so-called gimme tax if you order wines that look more approachable.
"Savvy beverage directors levied a 'gimme tax' on glasses of brand-name grapes like chardonnay and malbec," she writes. "They could charge more because most drinkers see a familiar grape, go on autopilot, and think, 'Give it to me; I don't care what it costs.'"
"'Cabernet' was somm-speak for 'easy money,'" she continues, alluding to the "golden rule" of sommeliers: "You can't make margin on s--- people don't know."
ADVERTISEMENT
This blew my mind. Not only do I overpay for the most familiar wines, I also probably overlook good deals on wines no one has ever heard of, according to Bosker.
She offers some advice on how to avoid paying this premium.
"When I went out to eat, I started steering clear of the classic crowd-pleasers," she writes. "For a shot at drinking great wine for good value, I stuck to whatever looked unfamiliar and vaguely intimidating — say, a mondeuse noire from the Savoie in France."
JOIN OUR PULSE COMMUNITY!
ADVERTISEMENT
Eyewitness? Submit your stories now via social or:
Email: eyewitness@pulse.ng
ADVERTISEMENT