House Wine

"Any objection to the house wine?" asked our host at a recent dinner to celebrate his lovely wife's birthday. All present shook our heads and mumbled incoherently to one another about our lack of wine knowledge. And so he proceeded with the order. The staff at the restaurant in question, La Taverna di Bacco, responded by plonking 2 bottles of white and 2 bottles of red onto our long narrow table overlooking the River Liffey. A good start; few things irritate Wine Goose more than watching a wine waiter circle a large party with a bottle of each hidden behind his back. Take it from me, asking for more information about the wine on offer is generally a waste of time - at most you will be rewarded with a quick flash of the label. Further probing might be rewarded with a heavily-accented and intentionally incomprehensible mention of the country of origin and/or the grape variety.

When the wine arrived my mind drifted back some 9 or 10 years to another occasion, on which Mr Q and Wine Goose celebrated a significant birthday in a restaurant with a large group of friends. A few minutes were spent wondering what had happened to the intervening years, then I remembered the house wine. It was served in a carafe, and was surely a 'blend' of the roughest, cheapest wine available in Dublin at the time, plus the previous night's leftovers, all finished off with any returned 'corked' bottles. Be thankful for small mercies, wine 'recycling' was not really an option for Dublin restaurants - we Irish customers have never subscribed to the international practise of leaving a small amount in the bottle so that the staff can keep au courant with the wine list. And in those days our understanding of corked was lumps floating on the surface. As I recall, we polished off several carafes.

So what exactly is house wine? From honourable European beginnings, when locally made wines reflected the restaurants cuisine, they rapidly became a rip-off. House wine was the safe option for those unfamiliar with many of the wines on the leather bound 'telephone directory' handed to them by a snooty sommelier. Unscrupulous restaurateurs weren't slow to pick up on their diners desire to make their choice before dawn, and it wasn't long before quality fell and prices rose. Not only bad to drink, they became one of the biggest money-makers in town, with restaurant price per glass approaching shop price per bottle.

Discerning diners (and winers) are gradually stamping out this practice. And some restaurants never pursued it in the first place. Nowadays, a good restaurant wine buyer or consultant should pay particular attention to the house wine. The next time you're in a restaurant take a tip from Alice King and order a glass of house wine to drink while you're perusing the menu. Her theory is that it sets the tone for the list, and if it's bad, the rest of the wines are also likely to be poorly-chosen. The opposite should also hold true!

Top marks to Il Taverno di Bacco. At €23.00 a bottle their house wines tick all the right boxes. Importantly, they are well-priced, suit a wide range of the dishes, and don't overwhelm the food. From Piedmont, the Deltetto Langhe Favorita 2006, with it's delicate orange blossom flavours is a medium-bodied delight. From Puglia, the Palama Salice Salentino Alba Rossa 2005 boasts fresh, clean fruit and earth flavors.