Broadly speaking, wine in restaurants is viewed by operators as a cash cow, with most lists run at a consistent margin of at least 70%. To further drive profitability, most restaurants work with only a few suppliers or even just one to drive down prices, even if that usually makes for a less interesting list.
More high-end places with longer lists are likely to use more suppliers to create a more compelling offer, but prices at the mid and top-end are usually still beyond the reach of discerning but cash-strapped drinkers.
In a tough climate, such an approach is understandable. But this dogged adherence to the status quo has opened the door for a new breed of disruptive wine-focused restaurant that buys differently and is therefore able to wow customers with interesting wines at more competitive prices.
Such establishments are run by experienced hospitality and wine professionals who have become disillusioned with wine in restaurants, and have essentially created places where they would want to drink and eat themselves. Here, wine is placed on at least an equal footing to food, with a large proportion of the restaurant’s time and cashflow dedicated to sourcing exciting wines that offer good value irrespective of price point. Wine is priced in a less binary manner than most restaurants, with shifting mark-ups that – typically, at least – scale down as the price of the wine goes up.
This new wave of restaurants are happy to deal with large numbers of suppliers and are also comfortable with sourcing tiny amounts of older wines – often just one or two bottles – from specialist suppliers, auctions and private collectors.
But perhaps most importantly, these establishments have removed many of the barriers associated with drinking great wine in restaurants. The lists are good value, food is accessibly priced and service is informal, jettisoning the pomp and ceremony that often comes as part and parcel with a special bottle.
Restaurant talked to four of the scene’s key players: two people from venues that played a big role in kickstarting the movement – Mark Andrews, the co-founder of Noble Rot, and Richard Davis, wine buyer and GM at The 10 Cases – and more recent entrants to the market, Wieteke Teppema and Rob Maynard, who respectively co-founded restaurants Gezellig and Wild Flor.
We sat down with the four of them at Gezellig and – over a few choice bottles (see Whose wine is it anyway? overleaf) – discussed how they are changing the conversation about wine in restaurants.
Wine as a greater focus
Mark Andrew: I used to be a wine buyer. My business partner Dan (Keeling) was a collector of wine prior to us founding Noble Rot, firstly as a magazine and later as a restaurant in Bloomsbury. When we started talking about the project in 2012, we felt there was nowhere reflecting the conversation ourselves, our friends and colleagues were having about wine.
Richard Davis: The 10 Cases in Covent Garden is about movement and having a dynamic space where things change. We want regulars to be able to come in and see something new every time. We don’t want to educate either, we want it to be fun. We also want to bring great wine to a wider audience; a lot of venues that sell good wines are inaccessible.
Wieteke Teppema: At Gezellig there are four owners, and two of us have a wine background. We wanted to run a place that put wine and food on an equal footing and was informal. My background is two Michelin star restaurants, we’re doing something very different here in Holborn.
Rob Maynard: We opened Wild Flor because there are very few good places to drink wine in Brighton and Hove. We’re all from a restaurant background but I worked in wine retail which has allowed me to work with merchants that have never supplied to Brighton restaurants, which gives us an edge.
MA: When we opened in 2015 there was a lack of places that were run by wine lovers first and foremost. London was in the midst of a gastronomic revolution and there were lots of great chefs, but wine somehow got left behind.
WT: The problem is that historically a wine list has been seen as a magic source of cash that can be used to drive the bulk of the margin.
MA: That outlook compromises the wine side of the experience for customers. Pound for pound the wine experience at the places represented by the people sitting around this table are better.
Penning a killer list
MA: You’ve got to look harder and turn over more rocks. That means more time on your computer doing your admin. You’ve also got to not view a two or three-bottle parcel as a pain. If you do this you will end up with a wine list that people who would not entertain doing those things can’t get close to. That’s what differentiates places like ours.
RM: We avoid obvious things such as New Zealand sauvignon blanc and Argentine malbec. They’re the biggest wines in the UK at the moment and they would stop people exploring the list. You’d sell fewer wines that customers would probably enjoy more.
MA: We don’t offer either of those either. But we would not rule them out. We just haven’t found ones yet that have excited us enough. We’re selling wines that we believe in on our terms. Red and white burgundy are by far our biggest sellers, because that’s what we love to drink. We are not remotely interested in box ticking. We seek out wines we think are authentic, have integrity, offer great value for money and – most importantly – are exciting to drink.
RD: But you need to be sensitive to what people want. If you build trust with customers on things they know, it’s easy to move them over to some of the less obvious stuff.
MA: I’m not sure I agree with that. Kitchens don’t do that. If I go into a restaurant and say ‘where the fuck is the beans on toast’ I’m not going to get beans on toast. At Noble Rot we’re not particularly interested in what people want to drink when they arrive at Noble Rot.
Bottle age
RM: In Brighton it’s a real struggle to find wines with any bottle age. For me it’s a shift from the two dimensional to three dimensional. Young wines are great, but age is a game-changer.
MA: Many people are drilled to believe that old wine equals good wine. We all know that statement needs to be qualified significantly. But from a customer experience perspective, offering older wines is brilliant because you can give them something exciting they can’t find anywhere else.
RM: For Wild Flor it’s not really about making money. We serve old wines because we want to, and we accept we may end up putting some of them in the gravy or pouring them down the sink.
MA: Older wines are of course much more complicated to buy. You need to have an understanding of what you’re buying and who you are buying it from or it’s not going to go well.
Natural wine
MA: Natural wine has been incredibly important in terms of changing the conversation about wine, especially with the younger generation. It’s brought about awareness of a number of things, including farming methods and the impact that wine production has on the immediate and the global environment.
RM: There’s this strange perception at the moment that classic regions and wine styles don’t represent good value. This is not the case. You can get incredible Bordeaux that you can list at great prices if you pick the right vintage.
WT: If it tastes good and I like it, it goes on. I’m not that bothered about how it was produced. I don’t subscribe to any dogma.
RM: Natural wine can be tricky because if you want to sell wines over a certain price point there aren’t that many out there, and the in-demand ones are very difficult to get hold of.
Cash is often king
WT: Up until around £50 we run on a 70% margin which, amazingly, is still at the lower-end of convention in London. After that point, it gradually goes down. Some of our more expensive stuff has a 28% margin.
MA: Unfortunately it’s not as simple as switching from percentage to cash at a certain point. If you do that you end up with these weird voids in certain parts of the list. We have created a rigid system that gives us a smooth curve as customers travel up the list, and we finish at a 20% margin at the very top of the list. These wines are often cheaper to drink at Noble Rot than they would be in retail.
RM: People can debate whether selling more expensive wine at a lower margin is good financial sense. But you will increase your average bottle price. I believe it’s more sustainable to sell great wine to engaged people at a lower profit than peel high margins off people once.
WT: The problem with cash mark-ups is that your holding stock has to be higher. You have more cash tied up – which can be difficult for a restaurant. You need to accept that. On the other hand, it makes a lot of sense to court people who love their wine.
Getting wine by the glass right
RD: Wine by the glass lists are almost always rubbish.
RM: And it’s what you're judged on a lot of the time, particularly at lunch when people are less likely to order a bottle.
WT: It’s an opportunity to introduce people to something a bit different because less commitment is required. I have a Spanish white made like sherry (Maquina y Tabla, Laderas de Leonila). If I just sold that by the bottle, I’d sell one a month. By the glass, I can give people a taste and explain it to them. It flies out.
RD: The key is to balance the familiar with the not-so-familiar. We all work in busy places, you don’t want to have someone standing at the table for 10 minutes trying to recommend a wine by the glass. You need a few things people will recognise and just order to get the transaction done.
MA: We use Coravin for some of the finer wines on our by-the- glass list. A little bit of gas is a small price to pay for that piece of mind.
RM: Coravin accounts for over half of our fine wine business. Giving people the opportunity to try small amounts of very exclusive wines can up average spend per head significantly.
RD: Most by-the-glass is well over 70%. With Coravin you can reduce that and take a cash margin approach and just pretend you’re selling a bottle, although you need to add on a bit to cover the cost of the gas.
Working with chefs
MA: There’s room for veto in extreme circumstances but we’re very lucky that our consultant chef Stephen Harris is a serious wine lover of many years standing. He’s a genius as far as food is concerned and wine is very much part of it. When he creates a dish, he’s thinking of having a certain wine with it. Our head chef Paul Weaver is into his wine too and we make sure all the chefs have wine training, so everyone is engaged.
RD: Chefs have better palates for wine than we often give them credit for. They just don’t have the same vocabulary to describe it, which is often a good thing as wine people often use overly specific technical language.
RM: There are some dos and don’ts. But the classical European food our chef Oliver Darby cooks is well-suited to great wines. He also cooks very simply, which really helps.
Service and staffing
MA: Everyone who works the floor at Noble Rot is a sommelier. But we don’t call them that and everyone serves food too – we didn’t want to silo off the wine function because wine was always going to be central to what we did. Nobody and everyone is a sommelier. We deliberately blurred the lines.
WT: The whole point of Gezellig is to make wine a bit more democratic and take away some of the intimidating things that come with formal service. Stripping that away allows you to offer wine at more reasonable prices, too.
What can other restaurants do better?
WT: Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. When you look at a list and see that everything has come from just one or two large-scale suppliers, it’s not good news. You also need variation in terms of price point and styles. It’s amazing that so many restaurants that do great food have such poor lists.
RD: I find it odd that people can open a restaurant that serves great food and then pay very little attention to the drinks side.
RM: The problem is that doing what we do in terms of sourcing and creating these wine lists is a full-time job. If you don’t have a person who knows what they are doing willing to dedicate themselves to it, it doesn’t work.
MA: You need to be tuned in enough to developed good relationships with the right suppliers. Wine is undoubtedly a specialist subject, but there are specialists everywhere that can help you navigate through it.
Whose wine is it anyway? Four wines that say something about each list
Rob Maynard: Fontodi Chianti Classico 1997
One of Wild Flor’s USPs in Brighton and Hove is that we sell older wines at affordable prices. This has sold out but was on the list at £50 – which is incredible value for a 1997 wine. This is an entry level wine but from a top producer. 1997 was a good vintage in Tuscany, meaning it has the qualities to stand the test of time. It’s hard to find this sort of stuff and we were only able to source a few bottles but it's worth the effort.
Mark Andrews: Michel Gonet, Blanc de Blancs ‘Les 3 Terroirs’ 2010
This is a wine we import through our wine company Keeling Andrew & Co. We sell a lot of champagne at Noble Rot so it’s important that what we offer by the glass says something about us. It’s unusual to see a grower champagne by the glass, let alone a vintage grower champagne. It’s on for £12 a glass. We take a bit of a hit on the margin in order to give our customers an unbeatable experience at that price point.
Wieteke Teppema: Willi Schaefer, Graacher Himmeleich Riesling Spatlese 2014
Riesling is a big deal here at Gezellig. The price quality ratio you get with prädikat riesling is insane. This wine is off dry so it's not currently the most popular stye of wine, but it is one that has stood the test of time. It also pairs beautifully with lots of different foods. It works well on the by-the-glass section, where we can hand sell it (£14). It was a gentle vintage in Germany in 2014, so it’s perfect to drink now.
Richard Davis: Domaine du Pélican Arbois Trois Cépages 2015
This is a wine made by high profile biodynamic producer Guillaume d’Angerville. He has roots in Burgundy but more recently started making wine in Jura, a relatively lesser known but increasingly trendy region to the east that is capable of making exceptional wines. It’s a pure and precise pinot noir that highlights how skilled people working in less obvious regions can do great things.
This is a web version of an article that first appeared in the September issue of Restaurant magazine, the leading title for the UK's restaurant industry. For more features, comment, interviews and in-depth analysis of the restaurant sector subscribe to Restaurant magazine here.