When I travel, I tend to go a bit extreme in my research of where I should eat and drink. Years ago, before taking a trip to Amsterdam, it was no different. During my weeks of research, I stumbled upon a new spot whose Instagram feed was chock full of wine nerd clickbait, but one post in particular caught my eye: “These Gems are Hiding in Our Wine Room: Kenjiro Kagami’s Domaine des Miroirs.” Naturally, I wanted to raid that wine room.
We arrived at the restaurant and cafe, and I dug through the list only to find it was not there. I assumed someone had the same idea I had, came in, and bought it. I could find another wine, but I had to ask. What followed was my first true experience with the “off list” wine. It was an interrogation, albeit a very kind and hospitable one.
“How do you know this wine?”
“What do you know about this wine and its winemaker?”
“Have you ever had this wine before?”
“Are there other producers from this region that you really love?”
“What other wines are you really into right now?”
“Are there other wines that you see on the list that interest you?”
Some of these questions were things a somm may ask a guest when trying to figure out what wines to suggest, but this was different. It was a test, a very polite test, but a test all the same. Ultimately, I passed, after which it was explained, apologetically, that the restaurant only received a few bottles a year and they wanted to make sure each went to someone who would appreciate it.
The wine was great, the meal was great, and the service was solid. Overall, it was a great meal, though, to be honest, it did strike me as a bit odd and a little off-putting in the beginning. While this wine was definitely culty and nerdy at that time, it had yet to reach the unicorn status it has now. They did post the wine publicly, and that alone would attract people who appreciate it. It was most likely meant to bring in wine lovers like myself to the space, so why gatekeep it?
I’d mostly forgotten about this experience until a friend told me about something similar that had recently happened to him in Manhattan.
He went to a well known restaurant, and one of the servers recognized him immediately as a wine professional and let him know they had some amazing “off list” wines. He ordered one of the wines and loved it. He went back a few weeks later and inquired about the wine, but this time he had a different server.
“That wine isn’t on the list. Where did you have it?”
“Here.”
“Who served it to you?”
“Another server, I don’t remember his name.”
“Here?”
“Yes, here.”
After a pause, there was a, “Yeah, we have it.”
Mind you, this was not a unicorn $500 bottle with only two cases imported to the United States. It was a sub $100 wine from an unsung appellation. Needless to say, it left a bit of a bad taste in my friend’s mouth.
I was amazed by the absurdity and frustration of it, but the story brought me back to Amsterdam. What would my experience have been if I hadn’t answered the questions correctly? Would they have denied me? How would I have felt? Would I have been embarrassed? One thing is certain: I would not have felt better about myself or my experience at the restaurant, and I’m guessing others would not feel great about it either.
I want to lay this out from a hospitality perspective. I’m of the school that everyone should get a wonderful and equitable experience at a restaurant or bar, and that everyone should feel like they are getting something special. Having a separate list just for regulars and wine nerds goes against that.
Daniel Eddy of Brooklyn’s celebrated Winner and Runner Up has long talked about having a separate list, though he doesn’t view the potential list as a secret. He looks at it in a similar way to a rewards program punch card. If a guest dines with them five or 10 times, they would “unlock” a special list with rare, allocated bottles at a fair, nongouged price. He sees the possibility as more of a known reward for consistent patronage.
His reasoning is that he has a pretty deep list of special, hard to get wines at below market prices. Some are his personal consignments. When he first opened, there were several guests who would come in, cherry pick all the special wines, and never come back again. “I’d rather reward those who become regulars than let the cherry-pickers clean out the list and never return,” he says. As of today, he has not implemented this strategy but hopes to someday soon.
I get it. Wine directors don’t get many bottles of certain wines, and they want them to go to people who will both enjoy and appreciate them. You also want your regulars to feel special, but I don’t love the practice. How do you handle the guest who asks for the “secret list,” but isn’t a regular or someone you know? They clearly know about the list. They’re asking. How can you be hospitable in that situation?
I know of a restaurant where somms are instructed to tell guests a listed bottle is 86’d if the wine director doesn’t know the guest or thinks they don’t “deserve” the wine. It’s crazy to me that this happens, but sadly it does, and this type of gatekeeping is exactly why wine is struggling these days.
If you list a wine, everyone should be able to buy it, regardless of their knowledge of wine. Most guests who come in aren’t going to know as much as the somm, and yes, the somm can and should try to steer people toward wines they think the guest will love and away from wines they may not enjoy as much. But if the guest sees something on the list and wants to pay for it, it should not be withheld. It’s bad business among other things.
None of this is without caveats. I would be lying if I said I never sold off-list wines. I have. At my restaurant LaLou, we had plenty of wines that were not listed for a variety of reasons.
Some wines needed time and were purposely held in the cellar until we thought they were ready to go. Occasionally, someone would come in and want that particular style of wine. We might sell them a bottle with the understanding that “it might be a bit tight” or “it’s a bit young, but let’s see where it’s at.”
Some wine lists only have a limited amount of space, and some places will keep wines off because they simply don’t have room and are waiting for another wine to run out before they can print it. I would 100 percent sell that wine off-list to a guest who was looking for something similar. Sometimes I would sell wines that had just arrived and we had not had time to list them, but I would sell the wine based on the guest’s preferences, not on who the guest was or what they did or didn’t know about the wine.
It’s important to note that these wines were not on a separate “cool kids,” industry or regulars list. They were offered to any guests who were not finding what they wanted on our list, and we were attempting to give them a special experience. It wasn’t a strategic “special list” for certain guests. It was happenstance that allowed us to do this, and I think that is the main point.
Here, it’s the intent that counts. Hospitality is giving people something they didn’t know they wanted. A special list for the worthy or those in the know is antithetical to that. It doesn’t create new regulars, it rewards the current ones while running the risk of alienating potential ones.
At a moment when we are barraged with stories that hospitality is at a breaking point and wine consumption is at a breaking point, that restaurants are going out of business, and grape growers are ripping out vines, we should be thinking of ways to get more people in the doors and drinking more wine, not excluding guests and potential wine drinkers.
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