When Do You Send Back a Wine At A Restaurant?

In an earlier post today, I mentioned how I recently dined at Excelsior Restaurant. While there, I could not help but over hear a conversation at the table next to mine. And once I heard a little bit of it, I carefully listened to hear even more. The conversation had to do with wine. In fact, the table wanted to send their wine back because they did not like it.

At the table next to me, there were three couples, probably in their 30s or early 40s. They ordered a French Meursault, and I believe it was the 2002. The Meursault wines on the list started at $100 a bottle and went as high as $370. The 2002 was a Marc Colin, Les Charmes 1er Cru ($175). The bottle was brought to the table, they tasted it and began drinking. At some point later, they asked the waitress to see the wine steward, so he could taste the wine. Basically, the customers just did not like the wine. It was not corked. They just did not care for its taste. The wine steward tasted the wine and found nothing wrong with it.

Yet the wine steward, to please the customers, took back the wine and brought them a different wine instead. That impressed me. The restaurant would have been full in their rights to tell the customers that they had selected the wine, that it was not corked and that they had to keep it. But they did not do so. Instead, they agreed to accept the loss of that bottle of wine to satisfy the customers. To me, that is certainly a restaurant which highly values customer service.

I was appalled by the behavior of the customers in this instance. If you order a wine at a restaurant, basically the only valid reason to send back the bottle is if it is corked. Just because you do not care for its taste, that does not give you the right to send back the bottle. If you are particular, then do not order something unfamiliar to you. Don't take any chances. Maybe whoever ordered the Meursault was trying to impress the others, without really knowing what he was ordering. In the end, they made the restaurant lose a bottle of wine that was worth over $100. Which contributes to restaurants pricing their wines as high as they do.

I have taken plenty of chances when ordering wine at restaurants. And I would never even consider trying to return the wine just because I did not like it. I take responsibility for my wine buying decisions. If the wine were corked, I would definitely send it back. Though that has yet to happen to me.

Wine is not an inexpensive beverage. It is not like sending back a cup of coffee or a soda. So it should only be done when absolutely necessary. And these customers at Excelsior did not have a valid reason to return their wine. Kudos to the staff of the Excelsior though for accepting the wine back, even though they knew it was a loss for them.