Why I hate your wine list

You may wonder why I already hate your wine list when I have never seen it, nor even heard of your restaurant. Am I just contrary, assuming without any evidence that your wine list is not up to my snuff, or do I hate all wine lists?

The answer is a little of both. The wine list I do not hate (and did not create myself) is few and far between.

But, you may protest, we are just a little family restaurant, and only have a few wines on the list. I would probably hate your list most of all.

But, another of you protests, we have an award winning wine list that is so large you can hardly lift it. Ok, I hate this wine list most of all, although I promise to spend a long time on it, likely enjoying parts, even while hating it overall.

By now any of you out there with your own wine lists are probably seething. You know your wine list is the one exception I would like, and you figure it is unfair for me to judge you so harshly. Prove me wrong, send a copy of it to me at wineguy@wineeducation.com along with a sample of your menu. Don't expect a detailed critique, I get the big bucks to do that, but I will tell you what I think of it.

So what does it take to make me happy? Nothing much, just near perfection.

Here, first of all, are my biggest pet peeves:

• A list created by a wine salesman or distributor
  
  They too often look like they are a dumping ground for wines that they couldn't sell.


• A wine list that doesn't take the menu into consideration.
  
  This is by far my most common complaint, and too many Award Winning Wine Lists fall into this group. Have you really tasted that $500 bottle of Bordeaux with your spicy signature dish?


• Bin numbers.
  
  Ok, this is just being picayune, but your customer should be able to refer to the name of the wine, and not a number. Bin numbers are for internal reference, not a shortcut to knowing the list for your staff.


• Lack of balance.
  
  This is the hardest one to explain, but think about your clients, do you have a little of everything for everyone? It does not mean you need every wine, or every region, but the major styles should all be represented, even if you don't like them yourselves.


• Layout.
  
  I am a big fan of putting all of the wines together by their main grapes, Cabs and Bordeaux together, Pinots and Burgundy, and so on. What I don't like to see is wines lumped together by style, especially when the style names are cutesie (you know who you are). This is confusing to your customers, even if your intentions are good.


• Bulk without regard to balance.
  
  Sure your list is huge, and you cover a lot, but is it balanced? This goes back to the balance above, but just because you have a lot to chose from does not mean you have something for everyone.


• Up to date.
  
  The kiss of death is a wine list that is inaccurate. This is the computer age, there is no excuse for being out of a wine for more than one night.


• Poor pricing.
  
  This works both ways. Make sure the wines you are offering are priced appropriately for your restaurant. I recently went to a family lobster house that had $200+ Bordeaux on their tiny list, but not a decent Pinot for under $50 or a single Pinot Blanc/Gris at any price. If you are a high end restaurant, make sure you have some lower priced wines on the list as well as the big guns.



• Bragging about your Awards.
  
  Careful about this one. It is natural to be excited when you receive recognition, but the most popular wine award of all may not be that hard to get. I personally have never heard of anyone being turned away. To prove the point, some years ago several associates and I created a list that was purposefully awful, but nice and big, and it won the highest award (the restaurant didn't even exist).

What can you do to improve your list? Talk to your customers, see what they are missing, this is critical, and all too rare. Make sure you taste the wines on your list with your food. Make sure your staff is trained in the wine list, they do not have to know it all, but everyone should be able to recommend at least three wines they have tasted lately. Keep the size appropriate. Too big and people will get lost in the list not knowing where to go. Too small, even for a family restaurant and people will not order any wine.

If you are not making most of your money on wine, you are doing something wrong. Chances are it is your wine list.

Review - IntelliScanner Wine Collector

A simple way to catalog your wine collection. Just scan in the bar code for each bottle, no typing needed. Such is the promise of the IntelliScanner Wine Collector, a hardware and software solution for Windows and Mac. The price starts at $179 and includes a bar scanner.

The main part of this hardware/software bundle is a handheld bar code reader. The one I tested plug into a USB slot on your computer, but there is a wireless bluetooth version available as well for (for $279) . No actual software ships with the scanner. Instead, a slip of paper tells you where to download the software, and supplies a registration number.

Inteli Innovations also makes other applications available for the scanner (available bundled together, or separately). Besides Wine Collector, you can get Media Collector to help you keep control of your books, DVDs, games and such, Home Assets for your personal goods, and Auction Automator to keep track of items you may be auctioning. All of these applications are available for Windows XP/2000/NT and Mac OS X 10.3+ (I of course tested the Mac version).

After using the system I was intrigued to realize that the scanner just converts the bar code into the number that happens to printed under the code. The scanner is recognized by your computer as a keypad, and in fact you can type the numbers in almost as quickly as you can scan them.

Since the scanner just saves you a few seconds of typing time, if that, the software would have to be the real reason to buy this package. Unfortunately, the software falls short in some very critical areas.

After scanning (or typing) in the bar code number, Wine Collector looks up the number on their on-line data base, and fills in the various fields, name, vintage and so on. Herein lies the problem.

First off, you have to be connected to the internet. You can not scan in a bunch of wines, and then connect to the Internet and look them up in batches. It is strictly a one at a time affair. This makes using the scanner and software on a laptop in your cellar useful only if your cellar has an Internet connection.

The second problem is the wine data base itself. It is a "peer submitted" data base, meaning people add their own entries to it and it has the potential to become more accurate with time. As of this writing, only a few of the wines I tested were listed in the data base. And as is also too often the case with these type of lookups, the data it did find was inaccurate and usually in the wrong field.

Therefore, even if the wine you are looking up is found, there is a good chance you will have to retype much or all of the data anyway. Since older wines don't have bar codes most collectors will find few of their wines can be entered automatically using the scanner. A partial remedy is supplied, in the form of preprinted bar codes you can add to your wines.

That leaves the software itself. Again, it falls short of being useful for most wine collectors. The fields are not flexible enough to accommodate the many different ways wines need to be listed. And while there are a few custom fields you can add, they are limited. The software hides quantities under the tasting tab, and as far as i can tell, there is no way to sort the data once it is all in.

That is not to say that the software is not useful. It allows groupings by manual lists, and even automatically by criteria. It has search capabilities and you can even add label art work if you wish.

Ultimately, Wine Collector fails for me because of the inability to look up wines in batches, and due to the inaccuracies of the data base. If you have a lot of newer wines, which have bar codes on them, and you are willing to put in the time to correct any mistakes, and share your manually entered wines, then Wine Collector can be fun to use, if not actually practical. If you have a data base you are already using, chances are it is geared more to the way you enter your wines, and you should probably just keep on using it.

Wine Collector is still only in version 1. Perhaps as it matures and addresses some of the shortcomings I have listed, it will be worth revisiting.