RESTAURANTS : Putting a Cork on the Price of Wine

You like to dine out. You don’t mind paying $10 for a salad and $20 for a plate of chicken. Still, that $35 bottle of Chardonnay really frosts you.

You’re not alone. As dining out declines across America, one theme I hear most frequently is that the cost of dinner isn’t the problem--the cost of wine is.

Restaurants that charge three times wholesale--or double retail--for wine may feel they are making a nice “margin” on the wine they sell, but when the tables are empty, there’s not a lot of margin to be made. There’s an old saying in the trade: You take dollars to the bank, not percentages.

To escape the outrageous pricing of wine, some wine lovers simply take their own along and pay the corkage charge. A restaurant that says it is prohibited by law from permitting you to bring your own wine is wrong: The state Alcohol Beverage Control Board has no regulation prohibiting a patron from bringing wine into a licensed restaurant.

In past rulings the ABC has said that if a premise is licensed to dispense alcoholic beverages, the holder of the license may permit a patron to bring in wine. The restaurant also may charge a fee for service and glassware use: the corkage fee.

The ABC pointed out that all ABC laws must still be obeyed, regardless of whose wine is served. The restaurant owner assumes full responsibility that wine won’t be served to a minor, and that the consumption of the wine won’t lead to intoxication--the same responsibilities that he has when he serves wine from his own cellar.

The ABC has also ruled that the same general rule applies to restaurants that do not hold ABC licenses. ABC acts on complaints of violations, but there have been few.

What is a fair corkage charge?

It depends on the restaurant. Some charge nothing, particularly if the diner is a regular patron. Some restaurants, in fact, will gladly waive the charge in exchange for a sip of a great wine, such as an old, rare Burgundy.

A random phone poll revealed that the average corkage charge in Los Angeles is about $10. This is up from the last time I checked, three years ago, when it was $7.50. Some neighborhood restaurants charge only $3 to $4. It is a modest fee because the glassware is modest and service is limited to pulling the cork.

Some restaurants, however, have the gall to charge $20 or even more for corkage, even if the service is poor and the glassware mediocre. A lot of people won’t put up with this.

In the last few years, I have seen wine collectors come into restaurants completely equipped with corkscrew and glassware and ask the waiter to leave the wine alone. In a Sonoma County restaurant a few months ago, a young woman arrived for a dinner party with three friends. She brought with her a box of sparkling crystal Riedel wine goblets, two bottles of fine wine from a private cellar and a corkscrew.

“We didn’t have to do a thing,” said the owner of the restaurant, “not even wash the glassware. So we didn’t feel comfortable charging her corkage.”

He said the four had a good time, left a substantial tip, and have been back to the restaurant since then--with the glasses. “But they ordered wine off the list the next time they were in,” he said.

Two years ago, soon after the opening of Fennel in Santa Monica, many wine lovers realized that the wine selection was poor and the pricing high, so they began bringing their own wine and paying the $15 corkage charge. When the wine list improved and prices became much more moderate, far fewer diners felt the need to bring their own wine with them.

Savvy diners realize, however, that bringing your own wine into a restaurant should be done with finesse. It’s extremely bad form to bring wine that’s already on the wine list. Call ahead and check. But if a menu features hearty foods such as venison and the wine list contains no red wines of character, it would be reasonable to pay the corkage and bring an appropriate wine.

Bringing your own wine should be reserved for fine wine. Some people bring wine and pay the corkage in order to reduce the bill--a practice that irks restaurateurs--but it would be poor form to do so by bringing in a $4 bottle. On the other hand, it would be perfectly reasonable for diner who wants to drink a 1988 Chardonnay that he bought a year ago for $14 to bring it to a restaurant whose list offers the same winery’s Chardonnay--if the restaurant only has the 1990 vintage, and at $38.

Restaurant News will return next Sunday. Really.