Wine bars are popping up all over the place. They are the new "Starbucks" in fact, it seems, even Starbucks is thinking about serving wine and beer. So if everyone and anyone can open a wine bar, then having something special, something unique is what is going to set each wine bar apart from the rest of the five others on their block. What seems to be the big "bravado" trend is having 300+ wines open for the customer to choose from. I guess Costco and Bevmo have now hit the quaint local wine bar circuit.So, 300 open wines... I first stare with glee like a kid in a candy store when I am presented with the iPad menu of wines and then the reality hits. Is this too much?Open wines all have different aging issues, and there are lots of factors to how a wine ages. WineSpectator.com listed two that were very important for serving wine by the glass on their site:- How old the wine is (Vintage)
- How much wine is left in the bottleDrinkwine.com further explains why how much wine in the bottle is the main factor to opened wine going bad, and it's Oxygen. They give a few hints for how to keep open wine good, but it all comes down to the amount of oxygen touching the wine as the problem. Red wine will keep it's character for up to 48 hours corked and refrigerated, while white should maintain it's form for up to four days.Gassing can preserve the wine up to two weeks, but remember that each wine will age differently when opened just like they do before the cork was popped, just on a faster scale.The questions start whirring in my brain while I stand in the mega wine bar. Yes, they have a gassing system, but with ranges of prices from $5 to $100 a glass - is each wine being tasted out on a regular basis? Does the staff even know what the wine tastes like if it is good, bad, or not representative of the wine? Do they record when each bottle is opened or last poured? Can the staff reasonably know anything other than what I can read myself on the winelist about each wine? How were these 300 chosen? Oh, I think I just got dizzy.Think about it. You walk into a tiny wine bar, with 15 seats, 2 employees and 300 open wines. They need to pour 1200 glasses of wine in at most a two week window (with some wines really needing to be poured in a much shorter time). 1200 glasses with each customer drinking an average of two glasses, that's 600 seats that need to be filled in 14 days. So, will 43 people a day come in to your favorite wine bar and drink from the open wines, two full glasses across the entire list to keep the wines moving and fresh? With 15 seats, that means that the bar is packed with people continuously for 4-6 hours with each customer sitting for 1-2 hours sipping their 2 glasses of wine. As a restauranteur that means you flip every table three times in the night. Drive by on a Monday or Wednesday - do you see that happening? If you do, then your wine has a chance of tasting as the winemaker expects it to. Do the math, for most establishments the wine just can't be consumed in time for it to be fresh.So when you see hundreds of wines available by the glass, look for the following before you buy:
- The establishment needs to have some sort of gas preservation system (Pulling air out of the bottle cannot pull all of the air out - so still leaves oxygen to do its dirty work in the bottle)
- ALL wines need to be gassed both reds and whites - Wine needs to be tasted daily by trained staff to ensure its freshness
- Wine needs to be dated when open and thrown out when not good
- They need to let you get a taste before you buy - it's the only way you will know for sure you are getting your money's worth.
Full disclosure here, I own a wine bar (with 30 open wines at any time and 35 seats) and I am incredibly picky about the experience I am looking for when I actually get time to go out, so I may be a bit extreme in my opinions. It's an awesome experience for me to see what people have done to project and complete their idea of what a wine bar should be, and I appreciate them all for their uniqueness. When it comes to wine quality though, I have a high standard at my bar. We taste every day, we know about the wines, the winemakers and for some, we have actually worked on the wines in the more recent years to get more knowledge. I loathe hearing stories from friends saying that they went into a place and ordered a wine and got something else passed as what they asked for. I hear stories like this all the time. Go out and have fun - but be informed on what you are drinking - and how long it's been opened.
