Peter Scudamore-Smith is an Australian Master of Wine. Founder of Australian wine consultancy Uncorked and Cultivated, he provides expert advice on pre and post millennial wine style. Straight talking Peter chairs Wine List of the Year Thailand and has wide experience judging numerous wine list and sommelier competitions. Here he gives us his top tips for creating a successful wine list.
There are no great wine lists, just
those which are a good read. The outcome for a restaurant is to receive an
order and not host a bible reading session, so the simpler the list, the better
your customer will feel.
You see after several pages the wine
list morphs into a book and people who are eating, dining or just hanging out
don’t require volumes of information about wines. Most diners never get past
the first one or two pages anyway, they turn off and hungry people become
distracted by what their waiter or sommelier has to offer. So you get my drift,
big belting lists are out of fashion in this mobile world.
The only saving grace for a longer
offering is a digital list; the customer can scroll through the pages in
seconds or use the search key, which also hides the hundreds of wines cleverly
sitting in the data base. This acts as a concealed cellar resulting in a clean,
simple read! Excellent... and nobody knows how many wines there are!
If a wine list is just two pages long
(my ideal) how does it look? Easy to read. Do some heavy lifting with the
design; headline wines by variety never region, that follows at the end of the
line. Use funk, use colour, be terse, be relevant; make it easy to navigate and
don’t choke with too many wines.
Make most drops available by-the-glass
or served from an argon cloud dispenser-50 ml, 100 ml, 150 ml etc. depending on
the price point of the bottle. The best profits come from by-the-glass sales so
try offering the best for drinkers. In
an era of shared plates this results in every diner drinking differently-so
glass offers are critical.
The real rub comes for restaurants with
large glass programmes: there comes a time when too many single pour wines starts
congesting the property (or deteriorating). This is the reverse reaction
forcing a reduction in listings; hurrah, keep it smaller.
A good restaurant owner, manager or
sommelier will keep the list fresh; change it daily and rollover at least
weekly or as soon as... a list over three months untouched is stale!
If you have a themed place such as an
Italian restaurant keep to wines from that region, stick to the concept.
So your list must be gorgeous not
grandiose, or nobody reads them.
World Trends by Peter Scudamore-Smith
Nice post. Thanks for sharing such a post.
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