BEING PENNY WISE POUND FOOLISH (WINE STYLE)



This is definitely not an ode to wines, as today I had a rather bad experience with restaurant house wines. The past trends in the Singapore F&B scene in these 5 years has shown that wines are experiencing an explosive & exponential popularity to the mass market (even Petrol stations are retailing wines!), and this has spilled over to the F&B scene where you are literally spoilt for choice in some restaurants, and even in the entry level cafes, you do get a choice of their house red & white wines. Now the question to all restaurant owners : "If you are committed to selling and providing wines to your customers in your fine restaurant, why settle for the cheapest, knowing fully well that 20% of your customers might leave with a bad taste in their mouth??"


Here's an industry secret i would like to expose :: for every housepour you buy in a restaurant, say $9.00/glass, the restaurant is unlikely to pay more than $16.00 per bottle. While $16.00 sounds like a decent wholesale price to pay, lets break it down from a wholesaler point of view:

Wine Cost : $3.00
Cork Cost : $0.20
Bottle Cost : $0.70
Labelling : $0.10
Alcohol tax : $7.20
GST : $0.70
Transport : $0.50
Storage : $0.10
Profit : $4.00
PRICE TAG : $16.00

EXPERIENCE : WORTHLESS...

So technically, for consumers, we are paying $9.00 for a glass of wine that is actually worth only $3.00 FOR A WHOLE BOTTLE! To cut the long story short, if we were to increase the cost of the wine itself by 100%($3 - $6), the price tag barely reaches $24.00 and we get double the quality!

Not that I'm discriminating against cheap wines, i've tried some REALLY decent & affordable wines (Tried an impressive Spanish wine that cost only 1.45€!!! but thats for another time to tell!).

But among the sea of wines out there, it really would be advisable to buy a slightly more expensive bottle of wine to get a far better wine experience & impression on your restaurant don't you think? I mean thats simply "Penny wise, pound foolish"!

I would like to leave you with a quote I found a long time ago which has shaped my wine buying ideals...

"Never buy the cheapest wine in any category, as its taste may discourage you from going on. The glass, corks, cartons, and labor are about the same for any wine, as are the ocean freight and taxes for imported wines. Consequently, if you spend a little more, you are likely to get a better wine, because the other costs remain fixed. Cheap wine will always be too expensive." --- Alex Bespaloff, New Signet Book of Wine, 1986