Readers chime in with more pet peeves about wine

At the end of Saturday’s “Across the Table” column on wine peeves, I asked for readers’ comments. I got dozens. It seems wine lovers out there are seething over sometimes flawed wine service in restaurants. Some comments added anecdotes or elaborated upon complaints included in the column. Others brought up new issues. So many concerned wine pricing and corkage policies that I’ll save those topics for future columns.

Joe Abramson wrote in with six more pet peeves, including “the server who constantly fills everyone’s glass when the glasses are still mostly full.” He’s just as steamed about the way someone who’s a quick drinker finishes their glass while everyone else is still savoring their wine. That person, which he dubs a “Hoover” (like the vacuum cleaner), “may get their glass filled two or three times while the rest of the guests are just finishing their first glass.” Of course that quick drinker is never going to tell the waiter to hold off pouring more wine until others have finished their glasses.

Abramson is not alone in laying into restaurant wine service. Here’s a sampling of what’s troubling readers.

Too frequent pours

Reader “chrstymck,” commenting online, hates it when a server’s frequent wine pours “rush the meal, which decreases the pleasure from the experience. We now typically take control of the bottle and have a much better time.” They are not alone. Many other readers wrote in to describe how waiters topping up the wine too frequently had driven them to take control of the bottle and do their own pouring.

Gary Ostrowski cites “the eager-to-pour waiter. I’m sure we have all had the experience where you have let the wine sit in your glass for a while, sniffing it now and then to see if it has gotten to the point where you are salivating to enjoy a taste then in a flash comes a forearm in front of your face pouring even more wine into your glass. I always appreciate a waiter who approaches with the bottle and asks, ‘May I?’ ”

Wine temperature

Commenting online, “tuned_ears” writes, “When I’m paying $70 and up (and way up sometimes) for a good red, and it comes at room temperature, what that tells me is the owner is either a non-wine drinker who just doesn’t get it (or) someone who couldn’t figure out how and where to squeeze in a decent wine fridge.”

KCRW’s world music maven Tom Schnabel recalls the too-cold wine at a now-shuttered upscale restaurant where he ordered a bottle of Amarone. “It was brought from the refrigerator and was way too cold. The server told me that was the way it was done. I didn’t fight it because I wasn’t 100% sure what the correct serving temperature was,” he writes. But “the wine was only coming around to proper temperature when the bottle was almost empty.”

And Chuck Willey comments, “As a hopeless oenophile I agreed with pretty much every one of your comments, especially the warm red wine. I have asked for an ice bucket for red numerous times and have had to endure more than one eye roll over it.”

Steve Glass, who teaches a wine class at Pomona College, writes, “I have found that I’m far more likely to be served white wine that is too cold than red wine that is too warm. If I order, say, a Sancerre, it usually arrives absolutely ice cold, and then I’m offered an ice bucket to keep it that way. Consider the problem, not of cooling a wine that is too warm, but of warming one that is too cold. Solutions are not that easy.”

Heavy pours

“Memo to heavy-handed waiters who over-fill glasses thinking their tip will improve because the table will need to order another bottle before long: knock it off. We’re wise to you,” comments “tuned_ears” online.

Bob Bookman writes in to describe a birthday dinner for six at a local restaurant. “As I was given the responsibility by traditional default to order the wine I was the last to be served ... except the incompetent server had emptied the bottle with the fifth glass. It wasn’t fun.”

Wine arriving too late

Stephen A. Robbins had one addition for my list: “It’s the carefully selected bottle of wine to complement your entree that arrives 6 minutes after the entree with the server saying, ‘I’ll be right back with fresh glasses.’”

Whisking away the last of your wine

What irritates Alain Pierpoint is a waiter whisking away your wine glass when it still has that last sip or two. “It’s a sin.” He cites a popular Italian restaurant in Pasadena “that’s infamous for that, or should be, to the point where you have to hold onto the glass if you want that last sip.”

The missing bottle

Bob Bookman offers a permutation of one of my peeves: “When the second bottle (or even the first) appears to be out of stock but you have clearly signaled to the server your price range, the server cheerfully suggests a substitute significantly more expensive. Ugh.”

Opening or decanting the wine at the bar

Several people wrote to complain about servers opening their wine at the bar, out of view, or disappearing with the bottle somewhere in the back to decant it.

Alan Wiener is particularly annoyed when “I bring a great old Bordeaux, like an ’82 Margaux or Comtesse de Lalande to a restaurant and ask that it be decanted. The waiter wants to take the bottle off to the bar to decant it rather than do it at the table. I don’t want that bottle out of my sight for minute!”

The disappearing cork

And lastly, Weiner adds, “the waiter uncorks the bottle and puts the cork in the pocket of his apron.”

And while we may all be heaping too much criticism on the hapless waiter, Dexter Strawther cautions, “Don’t just blame the servers.” He wants to know how much servers are paid. Are they at minimum wage? Or paid $20 an hour. Do they have to learn about wine on their own time or does management provide training for them?” All very good points.

One reader, Eugene, felt the article “comes off as very pedantic, snobbish, with faux righteous anger at things that aren’t necessarily the fault of service. A lot of it, yes, is the server’s fault, but a lot of it is the fault of the system and of customer expectations.”

So I guess we all have a lot of work to do.

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