Be Smart About the Price You Pay for Wine at Restaurants
The pricing of wine in restaurants has always been a mystery. Now thanks to Juliet Chung of the Wall Street Journal in her article “Cracking the Code of Restaurant Wine Pricing," it is quite clear that there is no rhyme or reason for wine prices. For example a bottle of 1999 Dom Perignon Champagne is listed for $155 at Legal Seafood in Washington, DC, $250 at McCormick & Schick’s in Washington, DC, $450 at Carnevino in Las Vegas NV, and $595 at Per Se in New York City. So, here is the same bottle of champagne that differs in price by more than $100 within the same city and by more than $400 between different cities.
If you take it one step further and compare a bottle of wine being served at the same restaurant chain in different cities the price discrepancy is also significant. At Ruth’s Chris Steak House in Dallas, TX the price was $96 for a 2005 Duckhorn Merlot and $160 for the same Duckhorn Merlot in Ruth’s Chris Steak House in Pittsburgh, PA.
Keeping in mind that the standard restaurant markup for a bottle of wine is about 3 times the wholesale price or about 2 times the retail price with inexpensive bottles having a 3 to 4 times markup above wholesale and expensive bottles having a 1 to 1 ½ times markup, one would have assumed some similarity in pricing from city to city and restaurant to restaurant. Even taking into account state taxes, shipping costs, bulk purchasing power, there appears to be no practical justification for the dramatic discrepancies in pricing.
If you compare wine pricing among restaurants to gasoline pricing among gas stations, you see that within the same town or city prices differed dramatically and even within the same gasoline providers (Sunoco, BP, Exxon etc.) the differences were large. Many people handled the problem by patronizing the gas station that had the best pricing and ignoring the gas station with higher prices. Whether or not this changed the pricing among gas stations is uncertain, but what is clear is that people selected where they were going to buy their gas based on the best price. Taking this one step further, if people selected at which restaurant they were going to purchase their wine based on good (realistic) pricing, they may not change wine prices but they will get the wine they desire at the best price. In this day and age it is prudent to be a knowledgeable buyer and that means being aware of pricing both in retail stores and in restaurants. Upon further investigation you may find that some of your favorite restaurants have great values on wines that you may want to try and other restaurants have great prices on your tried and true wines. Don’t give up the pleasure of enjoying wine when you dine out just be smart about how you spend your money. Keep in mind that buying wine by the glass is the most costly way to buy wine. When venturing out to new restaurants check their wine list on line at CorkSavvy before you make your reservations.
