While most people prefer choosing from the top of any wine list, it’s not where you get the best bang for your buck, writes Eric Asimov in the New York Times. He suggests starting at the bottom. While expensive wines are a must-have for any respectable restaurant, “the lower end is their opportunity for personal expression.”
Sure, the priciest wines “can nourish a rich fantasy life, "but with some of them fetching as much as $5,000, a good wine list needs to give cost-conscious customers something to enjoy and “make them feel welcomed, not just tolerated,” says Asimov. On a recent tour of some NYC eateries, he discovered that bottles selling between $20-$100 "signify the nature and identity of a restaurant as surely as the top of the list.”
(More cheap stories.)