Fact from Fiction

A friend referred me to an online article about a wine mixup. In brief, two parties were seated at restaurant tables near each other. The table of investment bankers ordered a $2,800 bottle of Mouton Rothschild while the young couple on date night ordered an $18 bottle of Pinot Noir. Each received the other's bottle. Since the article was posted on a social media site, the friend tagged me and asked me for my thoughts.

Before getting into my thoughts and how you can avoid this problem, you need some additional background. The restaurant in question was a trendy, upscale French brasserie in SoHo in New York City. Apprently, both bottles were decanted away from the tables and the individual servers apparently mixed up the decanters.

Can we call BS on this one? Well, that's hard to tell. But, let's try.

In my experience, restaurants that have dozens of bottles on their wine lists with prices in excess of $1,000 per bottle have a waitstaff wtih a reasonable amount of wine knowledge. In particular, in would be surprising to learn that they do not have a wine director/sommelier on the floor at dinner. 

So, where does this go awry?

Let's suppose that you ordered a $2,800 bottle of wine at a restaurant. (I could have said let's suppose that I did, but that's not happening.) You would or at least should have some expectations. The bottle should be presented at the table to the person who ordered it. It should then be uncorked, offered to the person who ordered it to taste and approve, and then decanted at the table, all likely by the sommelier for a bottle like that. It should not leave the table.

The next suspicious item is the mention of an $18 bottle of Pinot Noir. For inexpensive bottles, we would expect a markup to roughly 4 times what a reastaurant paid for the bottle. Of course, this is lower Manhattan where the markup is typically even more. That suggests that the restaurant paid about $4 for the bottle. But, look at the wine list; there is nothing on the wine list for less than $16 per glass.

Let's compare the wines. An expensive Pinot Noir without knowing more than that is likely to be young and bright in color. On the nose, we would expect lots of cherry notes. On the other hand, the 89 Mouton was heavily Cabernet-based and characteristic of that estate would be expected to show currants (nearly gone after 30 years or so), mint, eucalyptus, and chocolate. After 30 years, we would expect earth tones. And, we would expect significant browning around the rim. It is unfathomable to me that nobody would have noticed these differences. 

Yet, supposedly, the young couple were served the 89 Mouton while the investment bankers had the inexpensive Pinot Noir and the restaurant had to eat the difference in price.

Decanter is a respected magazine. To me, the facts don't ring true. If the restaurant did, in fact, make this error, they deserve to eat the difference, many times over. 

What do you think?