House Wines--Cheap, Poor, Profitable

“I’ll have a glass of the house wine.”

Restaurant owners love to hear that phrase.

Designed primarily to line the pockets of restaurateurs, house wine--not to be confused with wine-by-the-glass programs--is usually poor wine. And no bargain either.

Before wine was discovered by the upwardly mobile in the United States, vin de table was de rigueur in most restaurants. It was mostly undistinguished red wine and it was served in a carafe (often chilled).

In Europe, house wine was usually something made by the proprietor or bought from a neighbor who made it from local grapes. Much of it had no name and most of it had never seen the inside of a bottle.

Los Angeles, of course, has no premium vineyards and little local wine. Here house wine began to be defined as something brought in to satisfy the customer who wanted a glass of wine and didn’t care about its breeding. Thus was born the 18-liter box of wine. And then the 60-gallon keg of wine.

The 18-liter box is actually a bag--also referred to as a pouch or a bladder--filled with wine and placed in a cardboard box with a spigot. The wine is generally poor. It is also generally cheap. Prices run about $20, less with discounts for volume purchases. That means that an ounce of this stuff costs about 3 cents, or about 20 cents for a 6-ounce glass.

Since the average price of a glass of this wine is between $1.50 and $2, the profit margin hovers around 1,000%. But the profit margin is even greater for those who buy 30- or 60-liter kegs of wine, which can bring the cost per ounce below 2 1/2 cents.

What you get for this price is totally undistinguished table wine usually made from grapes grown in the central San Joaquin Valley and usually sweet or flabby or both. U.S. producers call these products either by their own name such as Inglenook Navalle Geyser Peak, Almaden, Giumarra, Franzia, Cribari, JFJ Bronco, Louis Glunz, and Taylor California Cellars, or by names created to identify the brand--wines such as Summit, Della Casa, Stone Creek, Vintner’s Choice, Carlo Rossi, CC Vineyard, and Master Cellars.

But consumers are becoming more savvy than they once were; many are now asking what the house wine is. And they are starting to say “no” when they don’t like the answer. So in order to serve better wine restaurants have begun to favor better made and more prestigious wines. The result is that jug wines have dropped in sales every year for the last three.

Don Jennings, wine specialist with Mesa Distributing Co. in San Diego, said that as restaurant sales of jug wines have fallen in the last three years, “premium cork-finished wines have been picking up some of the slack.” These are wines like Parducci, Fetzer, Wente, Round Hill, The Monterey Vineyards Classic wines, Glen Ellen Proprietor’s Reserve, J. Lohr, Barefoot Bynum, Bel Arbres, Robert Mondavi table wines.

Recommendations on dealing with house wines:

Always ask what the house wine is. If they won’t tell, don’t order it.

House wines seem to be disappearing. They are being replaced by wine-by-the-glass programs, in which vintage-dated varietal wines are offered by the glass. If both house wine and wine by the glass is available, the latter are generally preferable.

When a restaurant fails to finish a bottle of wine being used for the house wine, it sometimes recorks it and carries it over to the next day. This can produce flat, oxidized aromas. If you’re the first diner at lunch, either refrain from ordering a glass of house wine, or ask the waiter to open a fresh bottle.

Flaws are nearly undetectable when wine is near frozen. And yet white wine often arrives at close to the freezing point. When confronted with the chill factor, let the wine reach a drinkable temperature before sipping. If you then find a flaw in the wine, send it back.

If the glass in which the house wine is poured is very small, or if the wine reaches right to the rim, ask if the restaurant has a larger glass so you can swirl the wine.