How to Enjoy Great Restaurant Wines at Affordable Prices Without Leaving Home

Few documents offer better insight into the lives and means of the very wealthy than an upscale wine list. The voluminous tome that is perhaps the world's most extraordinary example of this, from Vienna's five-star Palais Coburg hotel, spans some 100 closely spaced pages, with many prizes reaching the high triple digits, and many more announced with one of two pithy German Euphemisms for "you definitely can't afford it": preis vor ortand raritat.

As out of -this decadent world as this kind of list is without a doubt, I understand the unique lure that drives some well-heeled wine lovers to save up for a night at Palais Coburg or in other successful restaurants around the world, such as Eleven Madison Park in New York or Sketch in London. Increasingly, however, you don't have to be a plutocrat – or even, for just one night, pretend to be a plutocrat – to taste some of the best restaurant wines.

< p class="dcr-3jlghf "> OK, I'm not talking about the extremely rare and expensive things like the 1929 Domaine de la Romanée-Conti or the 1893 Château d'Yquem offered at Palais Coburg. These will always be out of reach for most of us. Nevertheless, over the past couple of years, it's become much easier to find, buy, and drink at home the kind of bottles that were only on the top wine lists - and at prices that are only 'a fraction of those you'd find if you nervously turned the pages of the leather-bound book at a restaurant table.

It's a trend that's been accelerated by the pandemic, a time when the prolonged shutdown of their main source of customer base has forced many restaurant wine suppliers to consider other ways to reroute their wares. One was to sell more to independent wine merchants, the kind of high-end stores where restaurateurs are comfortable seeing their wines, or at least happier than they would be if they saw them in a supermarket. .

Another option was to become a retailer, cutting out inconvenient middlemen and selling directly to the general public. Many of these ad hoc online ventures didn't last beyond the first lockdown, but others did. With restaurant bankruptcies up 60% in the past year according to accounting firm UHY Hacker, the appeal of this new revenue stream for wine suppliers is clear.

It's obvious to bettors like me too. There's nothing quite like the experience of discovering a new, interesting, or simply delicious wine in a restaurant with equally stimulating food and company. But, in an age of inflation when our lives seem like nothing more than ways to make the most of our increasingly meager means, the home service provided by catering providers such as Jascots at Home, Indigo Wine spin -off the Sourcing Table or the Modest Le Marchand, among others, is by far the best thing to do.

Six restaurant wines to drink at home