Ever get the feeling that you’re paying too much when you indulge in a bottle of wine with your meal in a restaurant? I used to but not any more. The reason for the change is that, whenever possible, I bring my own wine along with me. What does it cost? Well, sometimes nothing and sometimes as much as 25 euros per bottle. That seems a lot to some of you, I’m sure but, if you’re going to an upmarket restaurant, 25 euros is about what that restaurant is going to make on a bottle of wine that they sell at 40 euros. And what’s more, I don’t think anybody should begrude them it. They have overheads in the form or wages, lighting and heating, insurance etc and it’s quite right that they should get a return (or ‘corkage’, as it’s called) on wine drunk on the premises. For most restaurants, the sale of alcohol is responsible for about 50% of the profits.

What I don’t like  is the arbitary mark up restaurants charge on the wine which is for the most part the same or very close to the mark up on the food they sell.  The expensive restaurants may make as much as 25 euros profit on a bottle of 40 euro wine but the same percentage mark up will apply to all the wines on their wine list. In other words, a bottle of house wine may cost 8 euros and be sold for 25 euros and a bottle of  Chablis Premier Cru would probably cost the restaurant 23 euros and be sold for 65 euros.  42 euros profit is too much for me to pay, sorry!

There’s a lot more preparation with the food than there is with the wine. The ingredients for the food come in their raw form then go through some type of creative process (hopefully) with the cooks in the kitchen before being plated up and served to the customer. Wine, on the other hand, comes complete needing nothing but to be taken out of the case it was delivered in, placed onto a shelve or placed in a fridge if it’s white wine for a time before being served to the customer. There’s a lot more preparation with the food that with the wine and yet restaurants make as much profit from wine as food. Or, at least, they used to before the recession. Now, it seems, restaurants are selling much less wine than 18 months ago. Maybe it’s time for them to look at their pricing?

Corkage, for me, is the only way to go. Being a wine geek, I like to drink a good wine at an occasion (by the way, dining out is an ‘occasion’ for me!) so I tend to bring pretty good wine which would cost me , on average, say 50 euros (but it could be more). If I was to buy a similar wine from a restaurant wine list, I would expect it to cost approximately 110 euros, perhaps more. Adding the assumed corkage of 25 euros on to the wine cost, the bottle consumed in the restaurant would cost me 75 euros in total. That’s a saving of 35 euros (110 – 75). That works out fine for me and I’ve paid the restaurant a fair price for serving the wine to me.

It’a always worth checking with the restaurant before the reservation is made  to see if they’ll allow you to bring your own wine in and, if so, how much is the corkage. Don’t be shy about it, you’ve nothing to lose!