While it’s hard to complain about the price of a glass of wine in Spain given that in San Francisco or New York, you can pay upwards of $12 in a wine bar, there’s plenty of bottle sticker shock going on. Take for instance the shot of a wine menu in an expensive restaurant in the center of Barcelona. Again, maybe 4€ doesn’t seem like a high price to pay given that they have a poshy interior and all, but take a minute to absorb something: the retail price of this wine is 5.20€. And that’s the retail price. A restaurant would pay more like 3.50-4€ for a bottle, so yes, they are charging what is essentially a full bottle price on one glass. You’d better make sure you get a solid pour…
There exists something of a schism in Catalonia currently, in that excellent wine is produced here, but the wine lists in Catalonia–and particularly Barcelona–are shit. The selection is horrid, usually consisting of Rioja wines or others that aren’t local, just cheap as dirt. Historically, the “vi de la casa” (or “house wine”) should be something that establishment owners would choose to drink as it represents a solid price/quality relation, but what ultimately happens is that it’s grape-based poison not fit to wash a dog’s ass. And then of course there are the massive markups such as the newly opened and very trendy Martinez who has a wine that retails for 7-8€ on their menu listed at 22€. Assuming around 5€ of restaurant cost, that makes a 440% markup!
But these are just the problems with bottle markups which while crap, have been that way for some time. The real punch in the grapes to almighty Bacchus is when it comes to the menu of wines by the glass. These typically consist of the cheapest wines from the cheapest regions and the restaurant will pay less than 3€ for these bottles. Even in expensive, fine dining restaurants they often don’t have anything by the glass or at most one/two choices. The general preference is to push whole bottles. Naturally, these aren’t often a good choice for couples with different tastes, or when the wife is pregnant.
Okay, so this is problematic, but the typical arguments when this point is brought up are, “Well, that’s just the price of eating out”, “Yeah, restaurants make their money in the drinks”, or “What do you expect, they’re a restaurant!” None of these arguments holds water though as if you just wanted to drink, then you would go to a bar, or ultimately stay in and enjoy a wine that you want to enjoy at a good price. The fact is that in a restaurant, the wines are there as a complement to the food. They should accentuate what’s great about it and offer an additional depth and nuances to the meal. Instead you end up with something that makes you want to order another bottle of water in order to wash down its acrid, overly acidity body.
Coming back around to how this sits in Catalonia, it needs to be noted that there has been and most likely will continue to be massive unemployment. Even people with income are generally broke. Why do restaurants think that they are entitled to markup wines so drastically and offer such a terrible choice all in the name of the almighty “crisis”? It only works against them as sensible people then don’t want to eat out and don’t want to order wine, especially when there is no local wine to be had at a good price.
This was perfectly illustrated when eating at a restaurant in Girona that was half full on a Friday. We asked for a wine from nearby Empordà. They said that it was out of stock. We asked for another which they also said was out of stock. We then asked why the only wines in stock were from Rioja or other regions outside of Catalonia? They said that nobody ordered these local wines which then made us contend that it’s extremely hard to order something which doesn’t exist. The server shrugged, we didn’t order wine, and the restaurant is now out of business.
It’s no wonder that wine consumption in Spain in general and specifically in Catalonia continues to drop in favor of beer. It is one of the few things offering a “good” value at the moment. It’s a sad state of affairs when there are 12 DO regions that offer wines for just about all palates and wallets.
8 responses to “Making a ripoff in a wine glass”
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I cannot be more agree with you. We really need a big change of mind. I m going to help as you do too.
In my region in California (Wine Country), during the recent financial crisis, some restaurants actually LOWERED their prices and started offering good value “Locals Menus” and Tuesday night specials, prix fixe simple dinners of high quality (but less expensive ingredients), with good value wine specials.
Instead of raising prices to compensate for fewer patrons, they created special offers and discounts to keep their customers. Not all the restaurants survived, but this technique did help keep many in business.
What a good restaurant/bar needs to survive tough times, is a loyal customer base. When you rip people off, you lose customers. They don’t come back, and they tell others not to go there.
I fully agree. In fact, the wine by the glass doesn’t exist in Catalonia and poorly in Spain. There are very few places to try a glass of wine from a good wine list and even more difficult, to taste it with the required conditions and at a fair price.
It seems to me we are loosing the oportunity to offer a proximity product as wine in a fair an profitable way for both parts : consumer and producer/retailer/restaurant.
Oh, I thought high markup on wine is the problem only of Croatian restaurants!
I’ve just spent 12 days in Catalonia (Sitges, Barcelona, Tarragona…) and I fully agree with Elia. But the situation in Catalonia is even worse because in Croatia the restaurant wine lists have become very regional-centric. So, in Istria you’ll find mostly Istrian wines, in Dalmatia mostly Dalmatian wines and so on…
On the wine lists of restaurants in Sitges Rioja and Ribera del Duero wines were dominating. This is almost a rule in those ones that are open only in the summer season, where locals don’t go and are owned by foreigners (English and French). And these Riojas were over-processed technological wines and heavily oaked, probably with chips, so that you don’t taste any grapes in the glass. We stopped drinking that shit because after the dinner you feel like shit – sleepy, without any energy to enjoy the nightlife until the dawn and with terrible hangover the day after.
Even in Incidencia del Factor Vi, a relatively good and a bit too pricy restaurant that promotes itself as wine lovers mecca of Sitges, everything revolves around Rioja. The staff was completely incompetent and didn’t know Sitges has its own dry white wine Blanc Subur made from Malvasia de Sitges that pairs wonderfully with seafood they have on their menu! And the choice of wine by glass limits to 2 whites, 2-3 reds and 5-6 terribly expensive dessert wines.
I think there could be some rule of thumb – if you see that local wines on the wine list of a Catalan restaurant are predominating (Penedes, Monsant, Priorat, Emporda…) there is a great probabilty the food will also be good, authentic and not too pricey.
Couldn’t agree with you more. I’ve been living here for 17 years and yes, the restaurants continues to offer only (for the most part) hugely expensive SHIT from outside the region.
Want to try different wines by the glass from within the same region? LOL! Good luck!
As a winemaker, I tend to drink beer when I go out to dinner with my wife because restaurant owners are either ignorant, clueless, greedy, or simply don’t give a dame WRT wine. Not to mention that beer is an extremely good value.
@Cait, I remember this period in San Francisco and tried a few of the “discount” menus. They were alright, but generally felt lacking, especially Jardiniere, which was such a bad experience, I would never eat there again.
@Dani, Mortiz Bar à Vins does an excellent job with their glass offerings, but the décor leaves a lot to be desired and they’re still trying to find their footing. Probably doing something similar, but completely removed from Moritz would work well as the big problem is that everyone goes there for the beer and the wine beer is seen as secondary. It will also be interesting to see what direction they go in now that Xavi Ayala left and has been replaced.
@Goran, I see bad things on the horizon for Croatian wine. I’ve heard rumors that some of the industrialists who weren’t able to get people to like their lab-made, over-oaked wines are now working to import piles of cheap Spanish and Italian wine with the entry to the EU. Oddly, this will probably make wine by the glass for affordable for a time, but it will destroy the domestic producers as I don’t see it possible to product anything from Dingač for the 3€ a bottle you find from bulk producers in Spain. Sadly, the best time for sampling Croatian wine for me was probably 10 years ago when you only found Croatian bottles in the bars in restaurants. Now with the tourism influx, it’s really gone to hell. Pretty much the same problem in Catalonia…
@John, it’s for this that we don’t go out much more at all and if we do, seldom do we order wine. Naturally, the better values come up the further away from the coast you get like at a small, village restaurant in Priorat that I love where the porró comes (ie no extra charge) with the meal and is full of quite palatable and easygoing wine.
Miquel, I know Moritz and also Monvinic are working ok in Barcelona and Vi7 in Girona, for example, but I mean they are only ‘drops in the ocean’.
In fact, I don’t know what comes first : if people don’t ask for wine by the glass because there is not an enough good offering, or bars decide don’t offer it because people don’t demand it.
I think it’s a pretty nice problem !
There need to be more 2€ glass options and maybe even a 1€ option from some a granel wine in the corner. Madrid is fantastic with this. The bars aren’t fancy like Barcelona, but they’re popular as hell.
We were at a nice, new bar last night and their selection is good, but there is nothing below 2.75€ a glass, which is difficult to swallow if you know that the bottle is 5€ (or less) ex cellar.