Choosing a bottle of wine in a restaurant is a simple enough concept: you pick something that will go with the food you’re ordering and which fits your budget, and you’re done, right? As someone who cares as much about the wine as I do the food and service, it rarely ends there. For a start, unless you’re dining solo, the odds are there’s a variety of foods coming, and that bottle of cabernet you are ordering to go with your steak is not going to do a salmon dish any favours. Restaurants with extensive wine lists will often have a sommelier on hand to assist you in this task, and a good sommelier will rarely steer you wrong. My only advice is not to be embarrassed to give them a budget to work with. Restaurants in Canada tend to mark wine up heavily, typically at least twice as much as you would spend on that bottle in a shop, and somms are aware of this. Read More