Originally Posted by
bhrubin
I'm not terribly concerned with whether or not anyone understands my logic. You asked me to explain, so I tried.
If a restaurant charges corkage for bringing your own bottle of wine, then I consider that to be the charge required for bottle service. We include that amount in what we tip. Of course, if corkage is what the restaurant believes is fair to offset the cost of not providing wine from their own menu, then tipping on the cost of a cheaper bottle of wine is still more than tipping on a corkage fee--so I feel like I'm perfectly appropriate in the calculations I make.
The cited article you included in your previous post reflected that there are no rules when it comes to tipping on wine, as well as the fact that restaurants are not offended when you don't tip on the high value of a single bottle of wine with an expensive dinner.
Restaurants mark up the cost of wine to cover their expenses in acquisition, storage and service, in my opinion. So tipping on that mark up is not appropriate in my opinion.
We have a 4800 bottle cellar with many expensive bottles, mostly but not limited from the New World wine areas (California mostly, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Argentina) with a smaller number from Bordeaux, Burgundy, the Rhone, Italy, Hungary, and Spain. Since our cellar often has better bottles than that of the wine lists at US restaurants, and since our wines were purchased directly from the wineries/vineyards, we almost always find it smarter to bring our own wine to dinner when we dine locally or in the USA...and often when we travel. When we are going to top restaurants where we most often prefer to do a tasting menu with wine pairings, we don't bring our own wine as enjoying wine pairings is one of my favorite things to do. I'm also a serious wine fanatic, in the midst of the UC Davis winemaking graduate certificate program, so I take wine very seriously and also live to visit the vineyards where our favorite wines are grown and made.
I appreciate that not everyone will agree with my take on tipping on wine. To each, his or her own, I say. But trying to chastise me is a fruitless exercise, especially when the very article you've already shared indicates that there are no rules on tipping with wine.
No - I wasn't trying to chastise you at all. It's just that tipping - and all its various protocols/conventions and various points of view - seems entirely too convoluted to me.
Like WRT bringing your own wine. And paying corkage fees - and tipping on corkage fees. If - like you say - the corkage fee at some places may be designed to compensate for not ordering wine off the menu - then what should I - a non-wine drinker - do? Tip on the cheapest bottle of wine on a menu - a wine I can't drink <LOL>? And should I subtract from that amount the $ value of any cocktails I drink? Should a vegetarian tip on the price of a usually more expensive non-vegetarian menu? Obviously those notions would be non-starters for most people.
Anyway - you deal with things best you can in a way that makes sense to you. And we do likewise. But I don't think we should have to. Things should be easier.
FWIW - I know there are often big fights that rage between BYOB advocates like you and BYOB haters (including many restaurants):
http://eater.com/archives/2012/09/07...ge-culture.php
And I ain't got no dog in that fight. In all the years I've been alive - I can only recall bringing a bottle of wine to a restaurant once. It was an expensive first growth excellent vintage ready to drink red Bordeaux that cost about $200 in the 70's in liquor stores (someone gave it to us as a business gift). And we uncorked it at a decent local French restaurant on Key Biscayne - where we used to live. When we were dining with a late friend of ours who was a wine maven and probably had a much greater wine cellar than most people do today. If only because he was a generation older than us - one and a half or two generations older than you - started his collection in the 1940's - when prices were a lot more reasonable than in later years - and lived long enough so he could see his best "deep/complex" wines mature and "come of age". I've only had that stuff that tastes like "liquid velvet" a couple of times in my life - but it's nothing I'll ever forget. And if someone were to put a glass of it in front of me now - I"d probably drink it and worry about the GI consequences in the morning
.
Anyway - may you live long enough to enjoy the wines you've put in your cellar when they're all grown up and ready to drink
. Robyn