When going out to eat, a situation may arise: you don't like the chosen wine. What can you do at that time? We find out the different ways to proceed in these cases, which vary slightly depending on the protocol set by the establishment.
Fernando Cundín, from the Madrid wine bar Ganz, wants to make one thing clear in advance: “although many people think that the sommelier or waiter serves you a bare glass of wine by uncorking the bottle with the intention of confirming that the wine you have ordered It's to your liking, it's not. The sole purpose of tasting the wine before enjoying it is to confirm that there are no defects in that bottle and that the wine is in good condition and at a good temperature”. He adds that in more specialized wine bars or restaurants, the staff taste the wine with the same intention, "which, depending on the knowledge of the person, this is almost more important than the tasting by the client, since sometimes the possible defects are not so evident”.
What happens if the client has chosen a bottle conscientiously? "Once it has been uncorked and if it is in perfect condition, you must keep it and pay the amount." In the event that it was the sommelier who recommended or insisted on a particular reference, and given the dissatisfaction of the client, Cundín affirms that the bottle is usually removed and the process of selecting a new one is renewed. "But this is something that doesn't usually happen: normally when a client puts himself in your hands and lets you choose, it's because you know his tastes well and you've hit the mark previously." If a bottle that is in perfect condition is finally withdrawn, Cundín can offer it by the glass or can allocate it to the team: “it is always good to save the wines from your winery so that the next time the recommendation is successful”.
Rodrigo González, director of wines and beverages at the Dani García Group, explains that when a bottle is returned two things can happen: "if it has a very serious defect, it is returned if possible or, if not, it is discarded, and it can also be used to train staff to detect problems in wine. On the other hand, if it is correct, it can be served by the glass”. In the group's restaurants, says González, the basic rule is to taste all the wines before they reach the table in order to rule out those with defects. On the other hand, he indicates that something out of the ordinary is practiced: "the wine must be something pleasant and if the client is not happy with the chosen wine for whatever reason, we will withdraw the wine and replace it with another".
The sommelier also explains that, in his case, when a wine is served for the client to try, previously tasted by the team at the moment of its opening, the intention is to verify that this is the wine profile that the client wanted.
As for the defective bottles, González explains that if they have been purchased from a supplier, they are returned to him: the supplier contacts the winery and is in charge of replacing them at the restaurant. "This is a positive exercise for the winery and for us: since you bottle in batches, this is how we help them trace which batch has been defective." However, others may result in an irrecoverable loss if they have been purchased, for example, at auctions or from individuals.
González recounts one of the cases that has remained engraved in his memory: “I opened a 1990 Château d'Yquem of 5 liters where dissolved anisoles could be detected. Given the value of the wine, we sent both the wine and the cork to be analyzed, and since it is a wine with botrytis, the results were not very conclusive. Despite everything, the winery sent us another bottle for the same value”.
From his experience, returning bottles for objective reasons such as defects does not entail large losses: "if you buy from a supplier, you are paying the cost of evolution so that the supplier assumes any deviation that the wine may suffer". Of course, the loss is 100% both in auctions and in purchases from individuals, "but it is a risk worth taking to find special bottles."
If there is a defect, such as TCA, oxidation or any other problem resulting from poor conservation, the wine is removed from the table and discarded. However, you have to know the wines to understand what can happen to them over time. Cundín gives an example: “There are some wines that, due to age or vinification, may present defects. It is obvious that if we uncork a 1982 Rioja we are going to find an evolved wine with some oxidation, or that if we choose a wine from a natural producer it is possible to perceive some Brett or volatile acidity. These wines are like that and it is our job that they reach a customer willing to enjoy them as they are. In fact, that is something beautiful about our work.”
In the event of such defects, Ganz will contact the bottle distributor, who will communicate the news to the winery in order to return and replace it. But this may not always be the case: “in the case of wines from old vintages that we keep in our cellar for years and that end up being defective, there is no possibility of returning or replacing that bottle. Here the loss is inevitable”.
For Carles Pérez de Rozas, cook, wine lover and owner of the Berbena restaurant, which will soon open a new premises dedicated to wine 30 meters from the mother house, "returning wine is an anachronistic practice based on that divine and social right that has a restaurant customer, who has no regard for the restaurant or balanced practices between customers and restaurateurs. It does not seem fair to me that in our sector, which is always in the queue regarding empathy with workers, it is still not understood that things have to be paid for”.
Pérez de Rozas alleges that the client, faced with dissatisfaction in the restaurant, such as not having drunk a wine to his liking, should pay and consider whether he wants to put himself in the hands of that team again the next time. He exemplifies as follows: “When we want a book, we go to a bookstore, we choose a book on our own or we let ourselves be recommended, we pay for it and we start it. If the book has 500 pages and we don't like the first 50, no one thinks of going to the bookstore to ask for our money back or to change the book. So why do we think we have the right not to pay for a wine that has already been uncorked for us? What we will do in the case of the bookstore is what we would have to do in the case of a restaurant: if the staff has been responsible for the recommendation, we will decide if we continue to trust their criteria and go to that place”.
The cook reasons that they ask the client what he is looking for at that particular moment and what interest he has in order to be able to choose both the restaurant and the client himself on a well-founded basis. “Thus, the client can choose and take responsibility for his choice. We pay so much attention to it and give so much information that returning a wine seems abusive to me. In their restaurant they have 260 references that explain in detail, in more detail than a menu: while the menu tells the technical details, the room staff can explain what sensations it will leave in the mouth, if it is recommended for the chosen dishes and, of course , the price. “A wine list does not have to be a kind of amazon where you can find everything. We choose the wines because we taste them and we like them, and it is important to understand that restaurants take on their identity thanks to the choices we make prior to the client's arrival”.
In Berbena they also taste all the bottles to make sure that the wine does not have defects such as the cork, to verify that they have sold something that the bottle reflects organoleptically and to check the evolution of the wines. “After this, we will leave the wine on the table and we would not have to ask if the wine is good or not: a priori, if we have arranged it on the table, it is good. We have already verified it. Whether you like it or not is part of going to a restaurant and discovering whether you like the restaurant or not by the choices you have made, such as choosing whether to serve monkfish or tuna, and by the recommendations you can give regarding customer tastes. at the time of interaction.
Pérez de Rozas wants to share an anecdote: “a couple asked me for a wine with structure, barrel-aged, full-bodied, and they also asked me for a typical profile, wines that are familiar to them, classic and comfortable. They asked for Riojas or Riberas del Duero and at one point they hesitated between 2 wines, a Finca Happa Reserva 2019, with 18 months in the barrel, with the particularity of the plot (94% Tempranillo and 6% Graciano) with albariza soils, which they give the wine more clarity and fluidity; The other wine, from 2017, 18 months in the barrel, with much more tannin, spicy points, dryness, noticeable barrel. I recommend that if you are looking for the wine you have ordered, opt for the second. But the couple chose the one from 2019. I open it, I try it, I see it perfect, and after two minutes I see a very strange face and a 'we don't like it, we keep the other one'. Before having a moment of tension that makes that couple have a bad night and infects the couples next door, in a place that is so skinny, I change the wine. But I will point out that I don't want to interact with them anymore, that I don't want them to come back to our restaurant, they have not had any consideration for me: why should I have any consideration for them?
The returned bottles, argues the cook, are not so easy to reuse. Depending on the price segment, they may not be served by the glass so as not to break with the selection of other wines by the glass that they have. "Doing this does not respect my economy at all: the table has not been able to consider that the wine they have ordered and the one that is being drunk, and within my economy, the second bottle of wine will not have any economic impact on my restaurant, no benefit, beyond the bottle, but in the rent, the product, the team, the services, etc. That they return a wine to us is to have lost the possibility of generating a sustainable economy to carry on a restaurant that, in addition to having reasonable prices, tries to have a generous impact on everyone who lives from it, from the producers to the workers and the owners, because It is time that we stop living badly and be equal to the clients who have a decent life, decent hours and decent salaries to come to my restaurant.
Sometimes, if we see that it is quite unlikely to sell the wine by the glass, we staff drink it a bit bitterly, because it is not a wine that we wanted to end up in our hands. Nothing is lost, we will drink it with the utmost dignity”.
Alkimia and Alkostat's sommelier, Bernat Voraviu, explains that they also taste the wine and give their clients a taste. “The idea is that if the client has chosen a bottle himself, what we do is check that it does not have defects such as TCA, which is repeated about 4 times a week, but there are also others, such as that the fruit is cooked. In these cases, the bottle is always removed”. On the other hand, there are cases in which it can be an aesthetic line: “the image that I have of a very old wine and the one that the client has may differ. The wine may have suffered from excessive oxidation and the line between what is acceptable and what is not becomes finer. In general, there we enter the world of reasoning and talking with the client. What is clear is that if the customer chooses a bottle without having any recommendation, this is the customer's responsibility. We are not giving it to him to test to see if he likes it or not, because he has already chosen it, we only determine if he has a defect ”. They will only accept a change when the wine they have recommended does not suit the client's taste due to a lack of understanding, either of the client's taste or, on the part of the client, of what wine was being offered. So, according to Boraviu, there are options: “If the bottle is correct, you can remove it and serve it by the glass. It is a deference, there is no obligation. But if it is the client who chooses the bottle and decides that he does not like it, he must assume the cost of what he has chosen ”.
