Details: Everything You Know is Wrong


Food & Wine magazine lies on my bedside table. On the coffee table errant copies of Wine Spectator and Wine Enthusiast mingle with Entertainment Weekly and The New Yorker. And every once in awhile, I’ll run across tattered wine notes stuffed in the junk drawer. All this snotty wine literature and a single volume of Details changed the way I choose wine.

My epiphany came from a lone quote in Details’ May issue.

You should be able to order the cheapest bottle at a restaurant and still get something decent. If you can’t, you need to find someplace else to eat.
— Julian Niccolini, Four Seasons Restaurant

What a concept. So simple! I will never be intimidated by a restaurant wine list again.

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May 6th, 2006
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Comment Number:
1
Written by:
Stacey Ornstein
Posted on:
May 7, 2006 at 9:04 am

Oh but it’s so true. A restaurant should be embarrassed to have a bad wine on their list. (Although that quote came from the Four Seasons and I’m sure there are many restaurants that just throw a list together). Not only that, think about the mark up– I had a $24 wine at a restaurant and went to the wine store next door to see if they had it… it was a $9 bottle!

Comment Number:
2
Written by:
David Blaine
Posted on:
May 7, 2006 at 8:35 pm

The four seasons cheapest bottle of wine is $65( http://www.fourseasonsrestaurant.com/index2.htm) and not every bottle of wine works for every meal, every occassion or every person. It seems a bit silly to throw away a perfectly good restaurant because the low end wine selection did not work for you. And yes, restaurants mark up the wine. Ever do the math on some lettuce and vinaigrette? Mathmatically, eating out is a silly use of money but so is driving your car to a health club to walk on a tread mill. High standard of living does strange things to people.

Comment Number:
3
Written by:
Jennifer
Posted on:
May 8, 2006 at 6:09 am

I think there is a difference between a poor wine and a poorly chosen wine.

But the point is there are occasionally wine lists containing some truly bad choices.