A game of swirl and tell

As someone who complains frequently -- and loudly -- about the extortionate pricing of wines in most restaurants, I’m always thrilled to find a bargain bottle. Or, better yet, an innovative pricing policy or program.

Alto Palato in West Hollywood has one of the best. On most Wednesday nights, they serve regional Italian dinners, and anyone who buys those dinners gets 40% off any wine on the list.

I’ve enjoyed Barolos with the restaurant’s Piemontese specials and Chiantis with their Tuscan dinners, and owner Danilo Terribili has even introduced me to wines I didn’t know from regions whose foods were new to me.

Terribili is not alone in trying to come up with new ways to induce Los Angeles diners to order wine.

Wine has always been a tough sell in restaurants here. Angelenos -- not all of them, thank God, but too many for a hedonist like me -- worry about the calories. And they worry about the potential damage to their health from the consumption of anything stronger than iced tea. And, somewhat more reasonably in our car-centric culture, they also worry about driving after drinking.

Like Terribili, several other Los Angeles restaurants are now trying to overcome these obstacles by offering vinous incentives.

One of my favorite steakhouses -- Balboa, in the Grafton Hotel in West Hollywood -- sells wines at 50% off on Sunday nights. One of my favorite lunch spots -- Patinette, at MOCA in downtown Los Angeles -- lets customers have a glass of the house white or red wine for $1 on Thursday nights if they order at least one main course. (In other words, you just can’t walk in, plunk down a buck, swill a glass of wine and split, without eating anything.)

Pastis, a sweet little bistro on Beverly Boulevard, offers two bottles for the price of one on Monday and Tuesday nights. You can drink one bottle with dinner at the restaurant and then, when you’re about to leave, Arnaud Palatan, the owner, gives you -- with his compliments -- a second bottle of the same wine to take home.

Once a month, Pastis also has a special wine-tasting dinner -- five courses, five wines -- and customers may buy any of the wines to take home at a discount price.

Wine savvy pays

But the best wine incentive program I’ve heard of is not here in wine-challenged Los Angeles but in New York.

At Montrachet restaurant in Tribeca, diners are invited to play “What’s My Wine?” -- and save money in the process. Three friends, my wife and I played not long ago, and here’s how it works:

You tell your waiter roughly how much you’d like to spend and whether you want a red wine or a white wine (or both). We asked for a white wine under $50 and a red under $100 (more than I usually spend, but one of my friends was picking up the check and she set the price).

The staff then chose our wines to complement the food we’d ordered.

Montrachet’s 30-page wine list is superb, as befits a restaurant named for the greatest of all white Burgundies. Not surprisingly, it’s heavy on Burgundies -- 13 pages’ worth, both red and white, including 33 choices among Le Montrachets. But it also includes selections from all over the world, in all price ranges, starting with 40 wines under $40. Best of all, you automatically get a 10% discount on whatever you order, just for playing “What’s My Wine?”

When the staff has selected your wine, the waiter will pour it blind -- usually by decanting it away from your table -- and he’ll give everyone at your table a 5-by-8-inch card containing six blank squares, one set of cards for each wine you order.

The squares are labeled “Country,” “Region (for example, Bordeaux, Burgundy, Oregon),” “Appellation/Village (for example, Chambolle-Musigny, Ruth- erford),” “Major Varietal (for example, Pinot Noir, Zinfandel, Chardonnay),” “Vintage (for example, 1947, 1999, 2001)” and “Producer/Winemaker (for example, Domaine Dujac, Chateau Latour, Phelps).”

You taste the wine throughout your dinner, discussing as you eat and drink. At some point before the evening is over, you consolidate your guesses and come up with a single answer for each square for each wine.

If you guess correctly on any one of those six categories -- say you decide you’ve been drinking a Chardonnay -- you get an additional 5% discount (for a total discount of 15%). If you guess two correctly, you get an additional 5% discount (total discount 20%). Three right, and the total discount is 30%, four is 40%, five is 50% and if you get all six right, the wine is free.

“So far, no one has gotten all six,” says Daniel Johnnes, the wine director for Montrachet and several other New York restaurants. “But we have had three or four people get five out of six, and I’m thinking of having a sweepstakes night where I invite everyone who’s gotten three or more right to come in and compete for a prize.”

Johnnes says he doesn’t think “What’s My Wine?” has necessarily encouraged many customers who wouldn’t drink wine to order a bottle, but he does think it’s encouraged some who would drink just one bottle to order two -- and some people, engaged by the challenge, now come to dinner more often than they otherwise would.

“People who play really get hooked by it, by the fun and the challenge of it, and they want to play again and again,” he says. “I’d guess that about 25% to 30% of the tables play it now. It’s probably increased our overall wine sales about 10%, but what’s more important is the atmosphere it creates, the way it enhances the dining experience.

“You don’t want to be too serious about wine, you don’t want to make the process into a ritual that intimidates people and discourages them from ordering wine. This game adds an element of play.”

It sure does.

They’re game to play

Our party of five had a ball trying to guess what we were drinking. All of us were experienced wine drinkers, and at least two of us have consumed enough wine and written enough about wine that we should have done quite well.

Hah!

Our team guess on the white was an Australian Riesling from 2001 or 2002.

It was a California Viognier -- the 2001 ABC Cold Heaven Viognier, to be precise. Johnnes, feeling charitable, gave us credit for the correct vintage -- one correct guess out of six, taking our discount up to 15%.

We did a little better on the red. We guessed it to be a Pinot Noir. I said a 2000 Pinot from New Zealand. My wine-savvy friend guessed a 1999 Burgundy from France. I yielded to her for the final guess.

She was right about the country and the region, but I had been right about the vintage. It was a 2000 Vosne-Romanee, Les Suchots, from Domaine L’Arlot. So we got credit for the country, the region and the varietal, and our total discount was now 30%.

Not bad. And neither Johnnes nor anyone else on the staff laughed at our bad guesses.

David Shaw can be reached at david.shaw@latimes.com.