After a long day of grinding away on our Torts outline, Team Hypo decided to go out for a little R&R last night. Master of Ceremonies Sally Proust selected a new wine bar – Vinoteca – located on U Street. D.C. has experienced a proliferation of wine bars as of late, and Sally and Pakistani Princess have made it their mission in life to try them all. I consider their opinion dispositive, and thus feel confident when I say that Vinoteca was utter rubbish.
The food was adequate. The buffalo sliders (little hamburgers) were well prepared and tasty, and my rockfish was exceedingly fresh. On the downside, my salad was served on a warm plate, Sally’s mussels came without a bowl for shells, and the sweet potato ravioli that she and Pakistani Princess spilt tasted like “baby food.” The wine list was substantial, but didn’t have a lot of interesting varietals, and some of the pricing was out of this world. ($88 for a bottle of Stag’s Leap Cabernet Sauvignon. Yikes!)
But all this could be forgiven. I’ve had forgettable meals in blah places before, which were made up for by my dinner companions. Vinoteca makes that impossible however. If you’ve ever wondered what it would be like to go to a wine bar located on the floor of a saw mill in the middle of North Carolina, in August, Vinoteca is for you. Sweet Jesus Almighty, the din in the place was unreal. And it was hot. So there we sat, sweating, eating mediocre food, and shouting at each other across a small table. Needless to say, dinner was wrapped up quickly, and we beat a hasty retreat.
Rating: 1 Tortfeasor (out of 4)
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Next time you want to bash on a friendly neighborhood bar take better notes! Vinoteca is a fabulous neighborhood wine bar and bistro that my friends and I enjoy very much and go there 3-4 times a week. Fantastic addition to the neighborhood and they dont need your stupid coments(which you have no idea what youre talking about). FYI Stags Leap Petite Syrah and not cabernet sauvignon. If your little brain doesnt know the difference and and doesnt respect the Stags Leap viniard stick with BUD LIGHT!!!
Anonymous,
1) I do know what I’m talking about because I was there. It’s possible that I was having a dream or otherwise out of my mind. Given that I had four other people with me who similarly sweated though the meal screaming at each other, I’m willing to rule those possibilities out.
2) I respect the Stag’s Leap Vineyard enough that much that I’m willing to spell vineyard correctly. Since the restaurant seems to be your second home, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt that it was a Petite Syrah instead of a Cabernet.
3) My concern with the price still holds up however. I took a quick survey of prices of Stag’s Leap Petite Syrah at wine stores in my neighborhood, and found that the average price was $38.31, plus tax. This means that at $88, the bottle was marked up about 129% over retail. Assuming that retail is about half of wholesale, that means the bottle was marked up 250%, which is confiscatory.
4) I never ever drink Bud Light. Ask anyone.
Anonymous, your friendly neighborhood bar would be much better served with a simple:
What’s the policy on disregarding the Rules of Conduct?
Maybe it was an off night, but Dr. Bombay accurately details our recent experience albeit a different one from our anonymous contributor. We’ll see how it stacks up to our next dining adventure TBD….
I have never heard anyone refer to one of these wine bars as a “friendly neighborhood bar”. Cheers was a friendly neighborhood bar.
I wasn’t there, so I can’t pass judgment, but given the fact that I have yet to visit a wine bar in this city that doesn’t serve the wine too warm, is not crowded to a ridiculous degree, and full of snotty wine snits who know about as much about wine as I do about astrophysics, I can completely understand where Sherpa and the gang are coming from.
But what do I know – I’m just marrying a sommelier.
Actually the good Doctor Bombay has it half right. The 129% markup that he calculated with his TI-82 is actually less than the real markup. The real markup is the wholesale to restaurant markup which is probably closer to about 150%. I don’t know for certain, I would have to consult the DC Beverage Journal.
Markups like these for wine are not outrageous but rather common within the industry. $88 for Stag’s Leap Petite Syrah does sound high, but considering DC commercial rents, it seems pretty acceptable.
The proliferation of winebars in DC as well as many other metropolitan areas across the country is easy to understand. They can be extremely profitable. If you think the 129%-150% profit is highway robbery, then I fear the hysteria to which you will surrender, when you learn of the far greater margins they make on their by-the-glass pours.
By-the-glass pours is basically a license for a restaurateur to print money. How? You may ask. Well at the end of the month wine salesmen know exactly what they have in their warehouses and what they need to push. The restaurant owner also knows that they can also buy out the remaining allotment of a wine in that wholesaler’s warehouse and in doing so can negotiate a better price. Sometimes this better price could be as low as $4-$5.
A 750ml bottle contains about 4-5 full glass pours. Some contend more, but when you read on you’ll see why I would feel guilty pouring less to stretch the bottle to 6-7 glasses. At the most conservative estimate of 4 glasses a bottle the bar would be giving their guests healthy pours. A wine bar can charge anything they want for a glass of wine, but industry studies have shown that people don’t trust a wine that costs $5 a glass. In order for the wine to have some credibility it must be priced higher. There are stories of restaurants suffering from low wine sales and have boosted their sales by simply raising their price. They didn’t change the wine, but the difference in price raised the guests perception as to the quality of the wine.
A wine bar should never price their wines below $9 a glass. At this price per glass and the assumed four glasses one would get from a 750ml bottle, you are talking about a markup of about 900%. This is what should be most upsetting to you.
This is not to say that $4-$5/bottle wine can’t be good. I have had plenty of decent wines at this price point that I would not feel bad about paying $9-$10 for in a restaurant. It may give Dr. Bombay agita to think that a bar owner is making this kind of margin, but running a restaurant is an expensive endeavor and there have to be some places where the owner makes up for that.
I don’t know how all of these winebars are doing financially. I do think they are satisfying a certain niche. They make great destinations for “girls night out” kind of thing. I just can’t imagine me and a group of my guy friends hanging out at one a few times a week. I think I’d rather shoot myself. These winebars are providing that “third space” that is often talked about. This is the same “third space” that Starbucks occupies during the day. It’s not home; it’s not work. It is something in between. It’s the “third space” where you can go and relax. So, just relax while you are being ripped off on overpriced beverages.
who is this clemenza guy? He sounds like a real blowhard….