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Ordering house wine

by Alice King

question
Is it naff to order the house wine in a restaurant?

answer

In short, no. The house wine often indicates the standard of the rest of the wine list. If the buyer is good at their job, they will have paid special attention to the quality of the house wine.

If I’m in a restaurant and can’t decide what to drink, I often order a glass of house white or red while I’m looking at the wine list. If the house wine is dodgy I don’t bother paying too much attention to the rest of the selection. It tends to follow that if the house wine is bad, the rest of the wines on the list have probably been equally poorly chosen.

House wine can come from any country. In a very expensive restaurant, the house wine can be something pretty classy while in other, more ordinary restaurants, it might be a simple table wine. In this day and age however, with the amount of well-made wines around, there is no excuse for serving unpalatable wine.

Don’t feel embarrassed ordering house red or white – if the waiter turns their nose up at you, then it’s probably not the kind of restaurant you want to go back to.

Alice

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