The phrase itself, ‘in wine there is truth’ as a broad English translation was meant by the ancient Romans (and the Greeks before them though not a lot of people know that) that drunk people are far less likely to lie than sober people. That is not our focus however. The wine list in an overall selling and merchandising strategy is often overlooked or treated as a bolt on in the events sector but there is an opportunity here. As consumers we are no longer satisfied with £3.99 bottles of Hirondelle or, from my youth, the dreaded Black Tower Liebfraumilch, which turned up in industrial quantities at most 1970 dinner parties. Making the content and presentation of your cellar a feature of your value proposition can both justify your price point and differentiate you from the masses. Here’s seven top tips to help you do that.
As in so many things about 20% of your list will form 80% of your sales. Make sure these big sellers are best quality for the price, represent a really good variety and are names that your customers will have heard of. Very few of us want to troll through a 100 page wine list. Make it short, make it good. 8 whites, 8 reds, 2 rose’s, 3 sparkling & 2 deserts? Unless you are the sort of establishment that features a cellar of 100’s of wines that really should be enough. That should allow you to offer crowd pleasers, a couple of vintages and a quirky one here and there.
Whilst a cocktail bar is not a wine bar why not make the bar the outlet for the high end of your list and as tweak the bar list to offer fewer of the crowd pleasers and more of the quality wines and make a feature of them by the glass? The newer wine preservations systems mean that you can confidently open a bottle of Nuits St Georges or Puligny Montrachet and pour one glass knowing that the remainder will remain good to serve for weeks.
Whilst the bar list is all about the wine itself it’s a good idea to show wine pairings with each of your menu items to help consumers make the right choice and take them over the barrier of ‘ I don’t know what to do so I’ll get what I always get from the supermarket’.
Describe the wines on your bar list according to their taste and flavour and please avoid the ‘masses of soft fruit & new mown hay’ syndrome. Simple language that explains the flavour and the heaviness will do. With food pairings why a Muscadet sur lie is great with the seafood starter is the thing. And two sentences, no more.
Way back Costa coffee execs asked their management why cappuccino was more expensive than Americano. The answer came back that milk was more expensive than water. Cost plus pricing. But did customers buy an Americano because it was 5p cheaper? No. they bought what they wanted, so without price gouging price according to demand. That probably means a lower margin on your most expensive wines but a higher one on the big sellers. And whilst we’re on big sellers again in research done in the early noughties it was found that customers who didn’t have a preconceived notion of what they wanted or aren’t exactly oenophiles tended to look at the cheapest wine in the category (red, white, sparkling) first then buy the next one up from that. Nobody wants to be the cheapskate! So, make sure that you’re second lowest priced wine is your best offer & margin.
If you are serving wine by the glass then why not use these as a sales tool to allow customers to become part of the solution? Using a tasting amount, a soupçon to help customers decide to buy a better wine is a no brainer. Use it for the high end wines – the ones you’re using the wine preserver to allow you to serve by the glass, along with your food pairing notes and you’re on to a winner in getting the average price up and making the customer happy about it.
As far as staff are concerned every customer facing member should have tasted and have a view on the wines you offer. People believe people who they think aren’t trying to sell them something and being able to say that ‘the Chiroubles will be a really nice, light but packed with fruity flavour wine to accompany the guinea fowl (it will)’, is so much more persuasive than ‘ it’s really nice’. How do you get this simple but effective training done? See below
And make sure you only negotiate terms when they‘ve a glass or three. In vino veritas….