Wine in restaurants, in Greece or elsewhere

Anyone who has ever visited Greece will know that when you go out to eat and wish to select a wine you are faced with two initial choices: house (jug) wine, usually out of a wine box and served in a carafe by the kilo, and bottled wine. In some cases there is only house wine, in others what bottles exist are badly kept and out of condition; in all cases the house wine is much, much cheaper than any alternative.

There is a myth that any self-respecting taverna or restaurant in Greece will go out of its way to ensure that its house wine is good and shows the place in a good light, much as is assumed about restaurants the world over. Alas, thirty five years in the wine trade has taught me otherwise: house wine is always temptingly priced but is the one on which the establishment makes the best return, rarely representing value for money. Were I not in my present impecunious state I would never order house wine and, indeed, in London I almost never do, as the cost of a pound or two more on a bottle yields a far better value-for-money ratio.

There are exceptions to this rule, but they are few and far between - there are some restaurants, for example, where the proprietors also happen to own vineyards or have a wine business as well - and they are most welcome. Truly, though, most proprietors know little about wine and are guided in their choices by their suppliers, stocking what they think will 'shift' i.e. appeal to their specific client base without having a personal point of view. More ambitious restaurants are able to employ a professional (sommelier) to advise the owners on purchases and then aid the customers in their selection, but this is costly and beyond the means of most places.

Stocking bottled wine is not a guarantee of quality, unless some effort is made to keep the wine in vaguely decent condition, look after the stock and its rotation, and ensure that it is not left in the sunshine - there's a lot of that in Greece - or any hot place, standing up for long periods or in the vicinity of very pungent smells. Any proprietor who wishes to have a wide wine selection must build a proper wine cellar or purchase the requisite wine fridges, but this adds to the cost and it may not be easy to recoup this, certainly not in the Greece of today and after more than ten years of economic hardship, despite the fact that there is still money sloshing around.

The margins for restaurants are always much higher for drinks than for food - that's really where the money is made. This, coupled with that most natural human trait, greed, has given rise to an increasing tendency to charge a very high percentage on wine, even if it is fairly ordinary stuff, needing no cellarage or attention so little investment. This has led to the unpleasant sensation of getting ripped off: if you see a wine on a restaurant list for 35 euros and you can buy the same for 6 or 8 euros at your local supermarket you may feel aggrieved.

Where wine lists do exist to flog more than just house plonk, assuming they contain more than three or four standard wines, they hardly ever show the vintage of the wines displayed. The explanations - and I have ranted about this before, dear loyal reader - range from the disingenuous to the downright ignorant, charmingly put forward bu people who understand little of their chosen subject :
'Our suppliers change the vintages regularly'
'It makes no difference as it is always the same'
'Nobody has ever asked or complained'
And the inimitable ' That's how they do it in France!'

Aaaaaargh!

OK, sometimes 'house' wine is perfectly adequate and matches the style of food, but the best choice? Very rarely, I'm afraid!