Enjoying dinner out with your family in friends is best done in a fine dining restaurant which serves top notch gourmet food and the most exquisite wines. Wine should never be lost in a dinner table, especially if there’s a particular occasion or event that you’re celebrating. But dining in a gourmet restaurant would oblige you to get wine from the establishment. If you dined in such a classy place but you brought a bottle of wine to serve to your guests, this would seem like some kind of insult to the restaurant, as though saying that their wine is no good.
Therefore, if you will be ordering wine from the restaurant, you should know how to choose a bottle of wine in a restaurant. Different restaurants offer different wines and wine varietals, but knowing your basics will help you make the process a faster and easier one.
There are a lot of factors which you need to consider if you’re going to choose a bottle of wine in a restaurant. However, before anything else, you should really decide if wine is what you want served. Are there no minors in the group? Do your guests drink? Sometimes, it’s also important to consider other options than wine in special occasions because no matter how exquisite your bottle of fine wine may be, if the guests aren’t interested in it, it has no effect on the occasion.
Menu First
Apart from everything else, wine is paired with the menu. Whatever dishes in the menu will be, the wine should complement it. If you’re ordering white meat, fruity and earthy whites or sparkling champagnes are perfect. On the other hand, if you’re having red sauce dishes served, red wines are the best partners for these dishes.
Choosing Wine: Glass for Odds, Bottle for Goal
If you’re not sure exactly what wine you want, you need to have a set of options. This can be found in the form of a wine flight. A flight is a selection of wines in glasses which are paired with their complementary foods. You can base your decision on the food that the wine is complementing or on the taste of the wine itself. You can also get a single glass of wine for one wine that you want to test.
However, if you have already decided what wine you will be getting before the actual dinner, you can just look at the wine selection offered by the restaurant and choose the closest varietal that you want from the list.
The Role of the Server
The waiter or server who is in charge of the wine has been trained to do his part, so he basically knows a thing or two about the wines ideal for your menu. You can ask him what wines are perfect to go with the menu that you want to have served, or you can ask him to match the wine with the tastes of your foreign friends. You can also ask the server if he has suggestions on other choices of wines that you can get.
Scrutinize and Taste
Once the bottle has been handed to you, check the label, the year, the vintage, and the varietal to see if it’s exactly what you wanted. If it’s the right bottle, have it opened and let the server pour you a glass. Swirl it, smell it for unusual odors, and taste it. If you’re happy, let the server pour wine in everyone’s glasses. If you prefer to have a different bottle, which will be seldom if you did the first selection steps right, you can politely ask the server to get you a new one.