The Restaurant Wine Ritual and Getting What You Want

You have been obsessing all week on how you were going to get her to say yes.    

You decided you were going to go into classic mode and impress her with a great dinner a fine bottle of wine and then pop the question.  

You take her to her favorite french restaurant.  The waiter comes over and asks if you would like some wine.  You ask to see the wine list and let him know that you would like a bottle of wine but are going to wait until you know what you are going to eat before ordering.  She glances at you with that “ooh this guy knows what he’s doing” look in her eye.  A great start.  You think a 2009 Chateau La Ponte Pomerol is the perfect choice for the braised beef she is ordering so you order a bottle.

The waiter arrives with the bottle and shows you the label before opening the wine  It is a Chateau La Ponte alright, but a 2011.  This has happened to you before where a restaurant will by mistake or by design will switch a vintage on you hoping you won’t notice.  2011 was a great year but still a little young and not nearly as drinkable so you send it back reminding the waiter you ordered the 2009. You glance over at her and she has an expression that tells you she likes a man who knows what he wants.  Your plan is working to perfection.  

The waiter comes back with a 2009, apologizes for his mistake, and after you inspect the label to make sure it has the right vintage you give the OK to open the bottle.  After pulling out the cork the waiter hands it to you for your inspection.  You confidently take the cork in your hand and you only need to check for a couple of things but to make the process more impressive so you do the full monty and check for three things.  The first thing you do is make sure the producer name on the cork matches the name on the label.  In the past unscrupulous restaurants would put inferior wine in used bottles, re-cork them, and resell them. By making sure the name on the cork matches the name on the label customers were assured they were getting what they paid for.  In this day and age the practice of switching wine is all but nonexistent and this is not necessary but you sure do look good going through the process so go ahead and do it. The next thing to do is to look at the bottom of the cork to see if there are any wine solids stuck to the bottom of the cork.  If you see some it does not mean there is anything wrong with the wine it just means there is some naturally occurring sediment in the wine and you want to make sure that you decant the wine so that any sediment falls to the bottom of the decanter and not in your, or more importantly, her, wine glass.  The third thing you want to do is make sure there are no red streak of color going all the way up the side of the cork.  It is OK to have a streak go up part way but if it goes from top to bottom it means that the seal on the cork was not tight enough to keep air out and that the wine is probably spoiled and you should reject the bottle.  Fortunately you saw no issues with the cork and you give the waiter the O.K. to pour a little of the wine in your glass to taste.  You take a quick peek at her and are almost blinded by the gleam coming back at you.  Oh what a night this is going to be.  

Just because the bottle passed the cork eye test does not mean your work is done.  You may have a bottle of “Corked” wine on your hands.  Some cork contains a small amount of a substance called TCA.  Prolonged contact of a cork containing TCA with wine will make that wine taste like wet, smelly cardboard.  You certainly don’t want the taste of  wet smelly cardboard to pass over her angelic lips, and splash onto that perfect tongue. You take a sip and after tasting the wine and making sure it has met your expectations and is worthy of her you instruct the waiter to pour some in her glass.  The almost imperceptible “oh” you hear her sigh as she takes her first sip lets you know that victory is close at hand.  

The food arrives you tell the waiter to pour more wine. The moment feels right so you pop the question;  “Say honey, you know the weekend that you wanted to go see you mom for her birthday, Mike has organized a golf trip to Tahoe you won’t mind if I do that instead do you?”.  

There is a proper way to signal a waiter to get red wine stain out of your shirt but that is a topic for another day.