March Shepard, a blogger out of New York, recently posted an article entitled “When is the Wine List Fairly Priced?“. I must say, I agree whole-heartedly with what Mr. Shepard said. If a restaurant with $13 entrees wants to offer a bottle of wine at $1,000 … well that’s their problem. But, if the least expensive bottle on the menu does not dip below a Benjamin, then that’s my problem! To sum up the post: The least expensive bottle of wine should be commensurate with the cost of a meal for one person.
Please keep in mind, markup is a different issue. True, a restaurant that has a 4x mark up will find themselves on the high end of what is acceptable; still, that was not a factor in Marc’s analysis.