Originally Posted by
JayhawkCO
I agree that it might seem like a lot for people who haven't often paid corkage fees, but the restaurants don't want you to bring in your own wine. They want you to order off of their list so they can make a profit. The "sweet spot" price should be one that is high enough to prevent people from bringing in their own "non-special" wine, but not so high that it makes people not want to dine there.
Case in point, I worked for a long time at a nicer restaurant that didn't have any corkage. Regular guests would go to the liquor store and buy the exact same bottle of wine as was on our list, come in and drink it, and then not tip at all on the bottle of wine. A corkage fee with some substance would have prevented that.
Chris
That's all well and good if one is planning to drink a 3-5 year-old bottle of wine of the sort that is normally found on restaurant wine lists. But the OP is bringing a 25 year-old classified growth Bordeaux that certainly is worth in the hundreds of dollars at retail. IMHO, most restaurants should feel honored that the OP considers their cuisine to be worthy of his special wine.
I believe that the reasonable corkage fee ought to be somewhere around the expected profit margin (as opposed to revenue) from beverage service at an average table of the restaurant. And I'd be surprised if that number is greater than $15-20 or so per table on average. It ought to be viewed as a means of compensating them for their opportunity cost that they are sacrificing by not getting to sell the patron some alcohol to accompany their meal.
On top of that, tipping on the corkage IS appropriate, because that compensates the server, whereas the corkage compensates the restaurant for their opportunity cost sacrificed by not selling the patron the sort of wine an average table buys.
Of course, there are quite a few restaurants that have recognized the value in cultivating wine enthusiasts as a client base, because they tend to be among the opinion leaders in matters of trendy restaurants and cuisines, and those restaurants do this by offering very economical (say $10-12 a bottle) corkage fees. This sort of corkage pricing at least covers the cost of providing the wine service, while also tending to encourage more repeat business among the wine enthusiast clientele, as well as positive word of mouth from these customers, who, as I stated above, tend to be opinion leaders in terms of creating buzz in the community folks who appreciate good food and wine.
That being said, it's one thing to offer cheap corkage on special bottles, that are unique, and beyond the typical restaurant's ability to stock in their cellar inventory, but it's quite another to offer cheap corkage on any old $12-20 bottle that's currently on sale at the BevMo, and happens also to be on the restaurant's wine list for $30-50. I can certainly see why a restaurant would feel abused in that scenario - as after all, their value added should include not just the cost of serving the wine with proper stemware and wait-staff time, but also in properly choosing the better values among those widely available bottles, and offering good advice as to what wines pair particularly well with the particular dishes that they serve.