Four truly upsetting restaurant wine service fails

By Kendra Anderson Wed., Jul. 11 2012 at 2:05 PM

Crying over spilled wine -- and terrible service.

There's nothing more delicious than an evening spent in the company of friends, enjoying the magical experience that is the simultaneous consumption of inspired cuisine and grape-based libations -- otherwise known as food and wine. Layer on top of that the fact that we can enjoy these heavenly events at any of what seems a veritable multitude of killer restaurants that have opened in Denver of late, and we can hardly remember that we occasionally need to dine at home, lest our wallets be destined to serve more as a clever bookend than a vessel meant to store cash.

But since we simply can't seem to resist the siren song of a new venue (and wherein, a new wine list to peruse) we've spent the past few months checking out the sips at no fewer than a dozen new -- or newly notable -- spots. Sadly, we've been subjected to more than a few scurrilous service fails at some -- which tend not to inspire return visits. Here, the four worst restaurant wine service-related moments we've seen in awhile:

Tags:

mistakes, restaurant service, wine

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Ruff

A peeve of mine is failure to list vintages for wines that clearly are of a quality (and price) to merit such info.

kendra

@thewinepurveyor as a former wine buyer and restaurant sommelier i know from experience that what you say is true. of course, it's not every restaurant's goal to offer esoteric wine choices...and that's their prerogative. my hope is that over time, more restaurants will embrace the synergistic relationship between offering a wine program that's just as inspiring as their menus.

kendra

@Xaydo:disqus appreciate your comment. i do want to let you -- and everyone else know -- that i actually provided direct, in-person feedback to management at three of the four locations that inspired this column so that they could take any corrective action they felt necessary.

The Wine Purveyor

I work for a smaller, independently-owned wine, beer and spirits distributor in Colorado. The reason so many restaurant wine lists look the same is because so many of the "big guys" dominate the business, and they have very deep pockets. It's hard to compete when, for just one example, a nationally-owned huge company offers a free case of cheap vodka for a restaurant or bar to use in their well for every case of Kendal Jackson Chardonnay they order. The restaurant and bar wine buyers who really care say no to all the freebies, but many many many of them say yes.

Xaydx0

Sorry, if you won't name the restaurants your article (imo) is basically an unsubstantiated whiney rant that offers the reader no help.

kendra

@davebarnes:disqus @thejury:disqus : the reason i didn't (and am not planning to) share the names of the restaurants referred to my column is two-fold: first, it doesn't matter where these service fails occurred. these places didn't set out to offend or upset me, or any other customer. my aim was to illustrate a set of unfortunate service trends i've observed at more than just these few locations; i simply chose to highlight these as my main examples. second, i'm not in the business of trying to "blast" restaurateurs for mistakes that they make. i'm hoping only to educate wine consumers that these kinds of experiences aren't okay, and possibly to inspire restaurant owners / beverage directors to keep striving to make their wine programs and staff training as fantastic as they possibly can. cheers!