As a Sommelier, This Is My Exact Step-by-Step Guide to Reading a Restaurant Wine List
<p>Most restaurant wine lists read like my five-year-old niece’s poems.</p>
<p>Nonsensical.</p>
<p>You’ve probably seen them (the wine lists, not the poems). They could be massive leather-bound tomes that take an hour to read and are little more than the Sommelier equivalent to dick-comparison (mine is bigger than yours).</p>
<p>They could be a minimalist list in a hipster small-plate restaurant that reads like one of those three-ingredient food menus.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Cotat. Sancerre. 2020.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>However they come, it often feels like they’re designed to purposely trip you up when all you want is a bottle of wine that isn’t going to cost the equivalent of a monthly mortgage payment and won’t take you three hours to choose.</p>
<p>I’ve written hundreds of wine lists in my time. Good ones. Ones that give the customer what they need.</p>
<p>Through that, I’ve learned a thing or two about how to read them. Even the bad ones.</p>
<p>After this, you will too.</p>
<h1>This is the biggest reason why it’s so hard to read wine lists (aside from “wine is complicated”)</h1>
<p>They’re not consistent.</p>
<p>One restaurant might describe wines like:</p>
<p><a href="https://medium.com/rooted-publication/as-a-sommelier-this-is-my-exact-step-by-step-guide-to-reading-a-restaurant-wine-list-12299b297d41"><strong>Click Here</strong></a></p>