How to drink well for less

This review was published in July 2002

A forensic examination of restaurant bills generally leads to one compelling conclusion: life would be much cheaper if you were teetotal. The conviction of wine as chief culprit in crimes against the wallet is beyond appeal. What remedy is available to us?

The only real way of escaping grasping restaurant mark-ups on wine is to adopt what we might call the Wine Trade Strategy - and bring your own wine. Wine merchants, agents and writers do this all the time; restaurateurs have come to expect it of them. You might think that it rankles with restaurateurs, who accede to the request only under duress. Not true.

"Any sensible restaurant would encourage it," says Nigel Platts-Martin of The Square, The Glasshouse and La Trompette. "It's usually wine enthusiasts who want to do it, and they behave reasonably - having one of yours and one of theirs, for example. It's nice to have a great bottle open in the room."

Joe Levin of the Capital Hotel and The Greenhouse is similarly welcoming; indeed of all the restaurants I contacted none said it would ever refuse a customer who wanted to bring his or her own wine (and especially not at lunch), provided they discuss this when booking.

Corkage charges vary, of course, from nothing at all (the Capital and the Greenhouse, excluding big parties) to £15 a bottle at Chez Bruce and Club Gascon; Ransome's Dock charges £9 and the Bleeding Heart £10. Corkage at the Conran group restaurants varies from nothing to £10 for wine and £20 for champagne: the decision is left up to the manager of each restaurant.

Robert Wilson of the Bleeding Heart said that this charge often meant that a wine was available on his list more cheaply than by buying it in retail and bringing it. I had dinner there in order to test this.

If it's true at all, it would only be so for a few young wines; the fact is that anything remotely serious or old will always be far cheaper if you bring it yourself and pay corkage. Calon-SÈgur '95 is on the Bleeding Heart list at £125 plus £15.63 service, for example; buying it en primeur, I paid just £16.58 a bottle, making a total of £27.83 including corkage and service.

Branaire-Ducru '96 cost me £23.12, meaning I could drink it at Bleeding Heart for £34.37, whereas I would be charged £68 plus £8.50 service to drink it from the list. The '98 La Nerthe Ch?teauneufdu-Pape cost me £14.59 (thus £25.84 to drink at the Bleeding Heart); it would be £62.44 from the list.

Adopt this strategy, and the only reason to drink from any restaurant list is the perfectly valid one of trying something new. My guest and I, for example, drank the profound, resonant yet unshowy 1999 Bandol from Ch?teau Pibarnon, the perfect accompaniment to chef Andrew Barber's generous and juicy black-leg chicken pot au feu, for an almost-acceptable £31.50 plus service; the Bleeding Heart list is full of curious excellence of this sort.

For other reasons (the Wilsons own a New Zealand vineyard), it has the best range of Kiwi wines in London. For a casual meal, thus, I would happily divert myself with one of theirs; for any special occasion, by contrast, I would always bring my own.

The final oddity is how few people actually do this; wine trade aside, most restaurants report that no more than a dozen customers a year make the request. Try it; you might like it.