How to find the best wines in a restaurant

Choosing a wine at a restaurant is always feels far more stressful than it needs to be.

If the restaurant has a good in-house sommelier, selecting a wine should be a pleasant, stress-free experience. The sommelier will help you choose a wine that is appropriate for your budget, meal and dining experience.

Brad Royale, wine director for Canadian Rocky Mountain Resorts, summarizes the role of a sommelier:

The sommelier, much like a museum curator, is there as an information resource. You don’t necessarily need to talk to them, but you’ll usually have a better time if you do. Wine is a lot like art — knowing the background story and the whys and whats can often give light to the appreciation of the piece you’re looking at.

But if the restaurant doesn’t have a sommelier and you’re the only wine enthusiast at the table, natural selection usually demands that you make the selection from the wine list.

Your friends, for example: “Can you find us something that will go perfectly with my steak, her fondue and your sea bass?”

Without an in-house sommelier, you are at the mercy of your own luck, or the best — but often misguided — intentions of a server who tried wine for the first time six weeks earlier. (And if that six weeks of training actually dealt with wine, they only absorbed about 2% of the wine knowledge, which was something to the effect of ‘sheeee-raahz is fruity’ or ‘serve Italian wine with Italian food.’)

If you are stuck without a sommelier and no resources other than your own fuzzy memory, here are a few tips on how to approach the wine list.

Stick to your price, but be flexible

You aren’t going to be happy if you paid too much for a bottle of wine. If your budget is $60 per bottle, try to stick to it, but a good approach is to be willing to be talked down a third or up a third in price. I know what I want to spend, and something between $40 to $80 will work for me.

Be cautious of by-the-glass pours

Unless the restaurant has splurged on a fancy Enomatic machine or has an extensive by-the-glass program, don’t be afraid to ask the server when the bottle was opened. I know I get pissed off when a $15 glass of chardonnay tastes like it was opened three weeks before.

Be prepared for the white wine to be served too cold and the red wine to be too hot. Be sure to check the wine for faults.

And finally, dessert or fortified wine by the glass? Just don’t do it. It was opened a long time ago.

Pay attention to the wine regions

Every sommelier has their favourite regions to include on a wine list, such as Bierzo, Cahors, Bio Bio Valley or Nagambie Lakes. If you are feeling adventurous, these wines are often a good pick. They can be less expensive and are more likely to pair well with the menu.

If no obvious preferred regions stand out to you, or if you’re at a chain or a less “wine-driven” restaurant, the list should contain a good mix of classic wines and safe choices. There might be a few wines that seem a little different, but fit in well with the tried and true bottles, for example, a Côtes du Rhone next to a cabernet sauvignon on the list. You might not know what it is, but it will probably work.

Think about where you’re eating and what you’re eating

Here in Calgary, beef is common on menus and most beef-heavy restaurants will have a number of wines suitable for red meat. This takes out a lot of the guesswork. The same goes for oyster bars, Italian joints and Greek restaurants. Consider the restaurant’s cuisine and the likelihood that they’ve selected wines that are geared toward your order.

But what if people at the table are eating different things?

Remember this classic piece of advice: white wine with white meat and red wine with red meat.

When in doubt, sparkling wine, lightly oaked or unoaked chardonnay and light-bodied reds pair well with a variety of foods. Spanish reds will complement pork, beef, rich poultry and spicy dishes, and pinot noir will work in almost any situation.

Don’t be afraid to try something new

Some of the most enjoyable wines out there are made from grapes that you might not be familiar with, such as moschfilero, marsanne, malvasia, agiorgitiko, nebbiolo and bonarda.

I enjoy going to Calgary’s Vin Room restaurant to play a little game I like to call “trust the sommelier.” I will ask the server for something specific, but still general, such as an aromatic white, and let the expert choose for me.

How do you choose wine in a restaurant?

Photo: Zagat Buzz