You should check the vintage date on the bottle. Many restaurants have various vintages of the same producer. The labels are usually identical and sometimes the date is hard to find. There is often a very large price difference between an outstanding vintage versus a mediocre one for a serious wine (And the restaurant knows that!!). And make sure the bottle is handled properly. If the wine has sediment and gets mixed, it needs 1 hour to sit still for the sediment to settle again. Ooops. If a red bottle is stored at a location high (in the dining room display maybe), it will probably be too warm. Room (chambre) temperature does not mean the temperature of the restaurant dining room (60 to 70??). It refers to the cellar temperature of (50 to 55 F). The best way to be sure is: Let the sommelier also tastes your wine. Your bottle maybe corky (and the majority of customers cannot detect cork unless in large concentration)and you think it is fine. You drink it and order a second bottle. The second one is not corky but will probably taste DIFFERENT than the first bottle. Send it back?? Yes but it is really your mistake. AND the third bottle will probably taste different also if not corked. Most will take drink it. Now, you drank one corked bottle, one fine bottle, cannot figure the why of wine differences, and puzzled the sommelier who thinks the second bottle is fine and is being sent back?? What does he/she think of you?? oooooh.
Yes, you can send it back.
Welcome to our third guest blogger series written by Ella Lawrence, who works as both a freelance writer and a server at a popular restaurant in San Francisco. Lawrence has been published in Travel & Leisure, Time Out, and the San Francisco Chronicle and has her own blog, Restaurant Girl Speaks. This is part five of a six-part series in which she dishes out the tips on how to be a better diner, something about which she has a lot to say. Listen up.
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