There’s nothing wrong with a glass of wine …

Most people would agree with that. But it seems that many restaurants disagree.

They’re the ones with wine lists but no wines available by the glass or which only offer the house wine by the glass. And they’re no fun; it doesn’t matter how good the food is sometimes you want just a glass of the right wine to go with it.

Why is this an issue? Well it’s all a matter of supply and demand. There is a demand and I suspect that there’s a big latent demand which is not being satisfied. And supply is constrained and the reasons for this are bogus.

Why is there such a demand for single glasses of wine? I’d suggest:

• some people only want a single glass. Either it’s lunch time and a second glass sends them to sleep or it’s any time and they’re driving when a second glass will put them over the limit;
• not everyone in a group wants to drink the same wine. In fact if everyone orders a different dish why shouldn’t they all be expected to want different wines? There’s more to wine than just red or white; or
• individuals may want to drink different wines with different courses.

Actually when you think about it maybe this means that restaurants would like a group of diners to agree on a bottle of wine first and then the individuals can decide what food they are going to order to go with it. And that applies to starters and main courses.

So why shouldn’t restaurants offer a decent choice of wines by the glass? The reason I’ve heard is cost. It’s not profitable for smaller restaurants to offer multiple wines by the glass. But some do and maybe they know something that the others don’t. That is that if you do the punters will come and order them. And with a glass of wine being offered at a substantial premium, typically 50%, they are laughing all the way to the bank. And it gets even better if there’s a 125ml offering

Some may argue that there would be too much waste. But the technology does exist to keep opened wines under nitrogen without breaking the bank.

But the restaurants that really annoy are those that pay lip service and just offer a house wine which is typically rubbish. Why should the person who only wants to drink one glass be forced to drink at the bottom end of the wine list?

My final grumble is the metred glasses in which wines by the glass are served. There’s typically about a cm  of free space so no room to swirl the wine and to enjoy its bouquet. Maybe that puts me in pseud’s corner but it is a part of the pleasure of drinking wine. Why can’t wine by the glass be delivered by small carafe as they are in many other European countries?

I’m getting quite militant about this and it all came to a head early this week when I would have enjoyed excellent food at a  restaurant in Bath but was really disappointed that the only wine by the glass was the house wine; and it ‘wasn’t great’. The restaurant response was defensive and tetchy. But what would you expect from a restaurant with a policy only to offer ‘old world’ wines. Surely given the style of its cuisine (modern, Mediterranean) its diners would have appreciated a few new world alernatives. I would.