Survival Tip to Service #2 - Know the Wine List in Your Restaurant

I was conducting a staff training with a group of servers, and I asked them to join in a roll-playing exercise where a manger pretended to be a guest who was looking for help in making a choice of which wine to order.

The "guest" asked the server to make a recommendation on wine pairing for the dish he was panning to order - he wanted something "classic" to have with his selection, and he had the wine list open in front of him. The server thought for a second, leaned over the guest, ran her finger down the page of the wine list and stopped at a certain wine. She then declared that "she-anty" would be a great choice to have with his meal.

What is the problem here? Well. to begin with, this was a server that had worked at that restaurant for nearly 10 years, and over the course of those 10 years, she had not learned the wine list. Had not learned the format of the list, the pricing schemes, and more importantly the selections on the list. There was also a lack of knowledge when it came to wine basics - in this case how to say Chianti, correctly - but also of main grapes, regions, and food and wine basics.

Some of this is of course on the restaurant and their lack of focus on training efforts, but the server had also never really taken any time to learn what was on the menu; there had been a lack of commitment on her part to be fully invested in the job. This had probably worked for her and because regular guests often simply order their regular food and drinks, and she didn't have to do much other than take orders, for the most part.

This only gets you so far, though, and when pressed she had no idea how to make a suggestion that made sense. The guest can read the list can probably read the list as well as she can - and certainly doesn't need a server leaning over them to read the list. And the fact that she could not pronounce a wine's name from the list shows her lack of professionalism.

Here are a few quick Survival Tips to Service for understanding and mastering the wine list in your location:

1. Read the Wine List - this may sound like a given, but I know hundreds of servers that do not regularly look at the wine list. Newer servers have to look at to go through training, but I know that once through all that - they often are not bothering to read the list. My recommendation - read the list out loud to yourself. If you cannot pronounce a word or name on the list, or you feel like you do not know how to say it correctly - ask for help. A manager, supplier, or even another server will be able to help you.
2. Look at how the list is organized. Knowing the way the list is set-up can go a long way to making good recommendations. Is the list organized by grape, region, style, price?
3. Have Go-To wines that you know inside and out. I always suggest having have mastered at least 3-4 whites and reds that you know really well, can describe them without hesitation, and know the broad food pairings that work well with them from the menu. Then add some sparkling, sweet, pink or other types of wines to your wheel-house. Build more from there as you learn.
4. Taste all of the wines offered by the glass. These will be a significant portion of sales, and knowing these wines will pay dividends over time.
5. Taste other wines whenever possible - at pre-meal meetings, monthly staff trainings, vendor tastings, or even on your own at a wine shop or at home.
6. Build your wine vocabulary. Think when you taste and learn the aromas, flavors and texture of the wines. Do these things remind you of the foods on your restaurant's menu? and why?
7. Work on your own education. If you have a wine on your list that is unfamiliar to you, look it up on the web. Look up the producer, the region and the grapes. Start with the winery website as this will probably have a basic description of the wine and other key info you can build from. Then move to other sites, such as regional sites, sommelier blogs or other places that might mention the wine or similar styles.
8. Once a month, READ THE WINE LIST AGAIN. Stay up-dated on changes to vintages, styles, additions/subtractions from the selections.

This may seem like a lot, and there are certainly some service personnel that will not get this involved, but in my experience the best service staff take the time to learn the menus and understand what their restaurant has to offer. Knowing the full spectrum of options to guide a guest decision will go a long way to enhancing your ability to bring a top-level guest experience, which will translate to better gratuities.

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