Part 34. Red Red Wine

Missing Malbec, looming Lurch and soft fruits.

If you like wine, after reading this you could put a Like on it.

Hello to you and welcome back to the Vanilla Black Substack. This week, and because we like you so much, we’re going

to tell you a bit about alcohol and restaurants.

So let’s get on with it and start off with a little story first. One beautiful morning at the restaurant, Donna was checking the wine order. The delivery people had a key to the restaurant and they would deliver the wine very early to avoid the traffic.That meant that when we arrived, it was all present and correct. Easy!

I was busy in the kitchen but I could hear Donna grumbling, turns out that the Chilean Malbec hadn't arrived, and we were heading to a busy weekend.

Now OK, two case of red wine (12 bottles) hadn’t arrived, but back then in York, the wine list was quite small, so if you were one option of of wine down, it could be a bit of a nuisance. Or if it was a wine which was served by the glass, therefore popular, it was painful. It’s not the same as running out of semi skimmed milk, you could easily pop to Marksys for that.

Plus, you could guarantee that as soon as diners arrive they somehow knew about the missing wine and would announce, “We love Chilean red wine, we’ll have a bottle of the Malbec please.”

So, Donna checked the rest of the order and I offered to ring the wine merchant to find out about the missing bottles. Me and Lozza were pretty much on top of the lunch prep.

“Hi Steve, it’s Andrew from Vanilla Black, any idea where our cases of Malbec are?”

“Oh hi Andrew, yea, we don’t have any.”

That’s it, he didn’t have any. Imagine saying that to diners , “We don’t have any.” Just point blank, we don’t have any, yes it’s on the pre printed wine list, but we don’t have any.

Luckily for Steve the wine guy, he would be sat at home watching X Factor when we were explaining, on his behalf, that we didn't have any. We never liked telling diners that we didn’t have an item available, it felt like failure.

“Oh well that’s good to know Steve. Any particular reason why not? And will you ever have any?”

“Errr, it’s something to do with the weather in Chile. Apparently they're experiencing some very hot temperatures, and all the perishable produce at the ports are getting priority to be shipped out so it doesn’t go off.”

So there was an actual reason, thanks Steve.

So I went to tell Donna, who was trying to quickly unpack the wine order and squeeze it into the small storage area.

“Donna, it turns out that it’s dead hot in Chile and all the fruits and vegetables which are at the dockside waiting to go on the ships will go off so the wine has to wait.”

“Ah Ok. Actually, that’s quite an interesting story to tell diners. It’s better than just telling them that we don’t have any.”

Now then dear reader, it’s funny you should mention wine. Let us tell you a little about the role of wine and drinks in a restaurant.

Now, you may have gathered by now, that restaurants are a business, that means they have to make a profit. And that means that they buy stuff, do things to it, then charge you the diner, more than they paid for it.

They’re not a public service, you know, they’re not like a library or doctor’s surgery.

Here’s another example. You take your car for a new tyre, the man, or woman, fits the tyre and charges you for the tyre, and the time to fit it. Granted, he, or she, may not have put in loads hours of sweat and graft to fit it, but they gave some of their time and they want money for that. And that’s the same with a restaurant, they make money by selling stuff to you.

We’re giving you this explanation because it’s leading somewhere.

Let’s set up a little scenario.

“Bloody hell Jean*, twenty five quid for a bottle of wine. That stuff you get from Tesco is only seven quid. They’re having our eyes out.”

“I know Jim, that’s how they get you. Always on the drinks. Look at the price of that glass of Coke, I can get a two litre bottle for 29p.”

Now, Jean and Jim are not completely wrong, yes you can buy wine and drinks cheaper than the restaurant is charging you. But when you paid a hundred quid to have that tyre fitted on your car, the tyre didn’t cost that amount. That tyre may have only cost fifty quid. So was the garage having your eyes out?

But a little bit of honesty now. Restaurants like selling drinks. Obviously there’s the mark up element, but the good bit is this……There is very little effort involved. It’s easy cash.

With the food there’s many hours of work involved. Various products are delivered, checked and stored. Then they're chopped, peeled, grated, boiled, roasted, simmered, poached, and stored in their appropriate places. They have little date stickers stuck on them and they're monitored to make sure they are in good condition. If the products don’t sell, they go in the bin.

If this is all mildly interesting and you fancy buying us a coffee, that button will sort that.

Somebody arrives at the table and answers any questions you have about the food, then they take the order to the kitchen. Then these products are finished off before service, plated and garnished. And these plates of beautiful food are taken to the diners. Then the dirty plates, pans, chopping boards, whisks, knives and peelers are washed and dried. Then put away.

Drinks however are much different. They arrive at the restaurant, they're stored on a shelf or in a fridge, then they're either poured into a glass or taken to a table and poured into a glass. Then the glass is washed. Then it’s put on the shelf.

Compared to food, drinks are very easy to deal with. And they don’t go off, no waste. Brilliant. In some ways, the money made on the drinks is compensating for the amount of time and money spent on the food preparation. Plus, alcohol is addictive, someone may well order five bottles of beer, but they wouldn't order five main courses.

So there we go, a little information about drinks and their role in hospitality.

Now, when we first opened, back in 2004, we knew we only had room for a small selection of wines, beers and soft drinks. We knew we would need some of the regular suspects to be available, Coke, a couple of lagers, a Chardonnay and a Bordeaux. But we also wanted some local beers and lagers, and some interesting wines. But space was an issue, the restaurant wasn’t a big place.

We calculated that to have that small drinks list in York, we needed space for around five hundred bottles of wine, beer and soft drinks, plus one hundred and fifty glasses. Imagine the space needed for a restaurant which has a selection of one hundred reds and one hundred whites.

Now onto the next bit about wines. People want to see a bit of ponciness around their wine, aye not everyone, but a lot do. You know situation, the waiter showing the label, opening the bottle at the table, letting you taste it, then slowly pouring a glass for you because you don’t know how to put wine into a glass.

If you were a sceptical person, you would suspect that this was to cover up the fact that it was easy money for the restaurant. This means you Jean and Jim.

Now, we never went down that road. No ponciness with us. Yes we could explain the wine to diners, and in London we had a much bigger wine list, a bigger restaurant, and more space.We also carried our staff training sessions, we had an order of service to follow, we took the team to vineyards, all new team members tried the wines to understand them. But we didn’t want to add too much fuss to ordering a bottle of wine. We didn’t want to appear too formal, or stuffy. No Wine Show for us.

But wait, if you’re not familiar with the Wine Show, and you need to know what it’s about, it goes like this. The main lead is taken by a Sommelier, this is a man or woman who is an expert in wine. They wear a little badge in the shape of golden grapes to prove how knowledgeable they are.

First of all they present you with the wine list, which in some restaurants could be fifty pages long. You read through the list, then nod off at page seventeen. The Sommelier’s job is to pop over to your table and wake you up, then point at a particular wine which they can certainly recommend.

Then, bleary eyed, you look at the description, then you look at the price. It’s a red wine from the Burgundy region and it’s two hundred and twenty five quid. “No wonder he’s recommending that one Jim.”

But now the Sommelier is standing over you, just waiting to see if you opt for his recommendation.You’re feeling a little uncomfortable, he’s stopped speaking and there’s that awkward silence. Get rid of him so you can go back to page one of the wine list. “Oh that sounds good fella, but can we have a another minute?”

“Of course Sir.”

By now you’re wide awake and you flick back to page one. Then you randomly choose a wine for thirty five quid, it sounds decent enough, “What does he know anyway Jean?”

Part two of the Wine Show is the Sommelier bringing the thirty five quid wine over to you as you wait like paupers. They show you the label, just so you know it’s the correct wine. It doesn’t matter, you actually can’t remember the name of the wine you chose. So you do the best thing you can think of, glance at the wine and mumble, “Mmmm, very good.”

Then Lurch opens the wine and shows you the cork. They do that so that you can see that’s it a little damp, which means it’s been laid down and therefore the cork is a little swollen so no air can get into the bottle.

“Ah look Jim, it’s a cork, not a screw cap.”

Next, Lurch towers over you and adds a tiny amount to a glass, then beckons you to try it. “Ey it’s alright that Jean.”

Now Lurch smirks, because what he actually wants you to do is follow the Wine Show script and test the wine for any spoilage, not wether you think it’s tasty or not.

Then the wine is poured and you drink it. In some restaurants, Lurch takes the bottle to a side table in case you accidentally pour some by yourself. Then when you’ve necked it, you have to stare several metres upwards to catch Lurch’s eye and ask for another glass.

“Oh, I see that Sir enjoyed that wine?”

“Aye, it was a bit of alright.”

Then Lurch slaps you both sharply around the face for making the ‘wrong’ choice.

OK, the Wine Show scenario has been exaggerated in the hope that you give a little chortle, but you get the point.

However, from the start we knew we had to take the wine and it’s service seriously, and there’s a particular reason for that.

You see, many years ago, it was the norm for a vegetarian restaurant to open without an alcohol license. It was just easy, less faff. But what these establishments did instead, was offer BYO, bring your own. Basically you could take your own wine to the restaurant, actually, in some restaurants you still can, but they charge you something called corkage. But the Beanbag Cafes didn’t charge you anything, they let you drink your own wine so that they made less profit.

But we didn’t want to be tarred with the Beanbag Cafe brush, and we needed to make money to pay the rent and rates, so we had to have a wine list, a good one.

Actually, a quick story, we hadn’t been open for very long and a table of four booked in. When they sat down one of the blokes pulled a bottle of wine from his carrier bag, plonked it on the table and gestured to someone that it needed opening. When he was told that we didn’t allow BYO, he stated, “But it’s a vegetarian restaurant isn’t it?!”

You see how deep that vegetarian stereotype was back then.

But we also wanted to be fair, some reasonably priced house wine had to be available. We had a couple of traditional options and a couple of curve balls. And we would leave the wine on the table so customers could pour their own, sorry Lurch. And wine by the glass, that had to be decent and affordable.

However, the biggest issue at the time was finding wines which were suitable for vegetarians and vegans. You see, some wine producers use ingredients such as gelatine, fish bladders, egg white or even ox blood to clear their wines. So this was important, the wine merchant spent many an hour contacting wine producers to ask if their wine was suitable for vegetarians. One producer responded with, ‘yes, our wine pairs very well with vegetables.’ Thankfully, it’s much easier now, some labels are even marked to save you pestering the vineyard.

OK. One more wine story. Now, this was told to us by a wine merchant, we didn’t actually hear it first hand, that’s a disclaimer.

So, you know when you hear those stories about a restaurant which has a fifty thousand pound bottle of wine on their list? Well we were told that the wine isn’t actually there in the restaurant. It does seem a bit odd to have so much money sat on a shelf gathering dust. So we asked a wine merchant about this. And he told us that because the restaurant doesn’t want to fork out huge amounts of dosh for no reason, they have a special system in place, just in case someone does order it.

And apparently, or allegedly, it goes like this. Lord Whatshisface is out having a bit of a laugh with his mates. He beckons Lurch over and tells him they’ll have the bottle of the Chateau Diddlydoo.

Lurch is chuffed, no sharp slap in the face for these guys. But they don’t have the wine on stock at the restaurant, it’s too expensive. So they phone the wine merchant and they have it sent to the restaurant as quickly as possible.

But hang on, what if it was at 10pm?

Apparently it didn’t matter, for a fifty grand order they’d do it.

Whether it’s true ir not, don’t know, but it’s an interesting story.

Right, that’ll do. Thanks for reading and we’ll catch up next week.

Andrew and Donna

*Jim and Jean are fictional characters which have been created for the purpose of this story. Any resemblance to actual people is purely coincidental.