Charlottesville Restaurants Corkage Policies

Given Virginia’s newly passed law allowing consumers to bring their own wines into restaurants, we’ve compiled a list of local dining rooms and their corkage fees for your reference. We’ll update the list periodically so please continue to check back for new additions and fee changes. If you know of any restaurants not on the list or changes to those on the list, please let us know and we’ll update with the correct information.

Proper Etiquette For Bringing Wine To A Restaurant.

A  friend and I had a long talk with a local restaurateur on Monday evening (over a bottle of the 2005 Barberesco Asili from the Guild) about the new law. He made it clear that while the law takes money out of his pocket (decreased wine sales with a corkage fee that doesn’t begin to cover his average wine margin), he was thrilled to see the treasures his clientele were bringing in and loved that they were interested to pair these great wines with his food.

The good will is there, but a little friendly guidance might be in order to help preserve it:

• Respect the restaurant — Not every restaurant will participate in the program — it‘s voluntary on their part and if they choose not to allow outside wines into their dining room, they’ve probably got a pretty good reason.  (Often, a chef has invested so much time and energy in the cuisine that they may entrust wine pairing only to a trained sommelier.  Can you really blame them?)

• Call ahead — If you do want to bring in your own wine, call ahead to confirm the corkage fee and apprise the sommelier of the wine you’re bringing and any special needs (a decanter, a mesh filter, a crane for that special 20 litre Nebuchadnezzar of ’82 Haut Brion you’ve been saving for my birthday!).

• Hand deliver the wine — Upon arrival, politely remind your host that you’ve called ahead about bringing a wine and ask to whom should you speak about having it served.

• Choose wisely — Don’t bring commonly available, current vintage wines into a restaurant and never bring a wine the restaurant has on their list. In fact, it’s a good idea to double check their wine list when you arrive to be sure.

• Share – Offer the sommelier a taste and offer to send a taste back to the chef.  Let your server taste.  Or the neighboring table — sharing the enjoyment is the purpose of wine.

• And finally, please tip well –  A little background:  There remains a debate about tipping on food alone or food and wine.  One argument for not tipping on wine is that the bottle mark-up includes the service.  A common counter-argument is that yes, the tip is for service — but the waiter is the one serving you, not the restaurant.  When you bring your own bottle, the restaurant has forgone the majority of money they make on wine by allowing you to bring yours for a menial corkage fee and your server has done exactly the same amount of work, if not more, but the bill doesn’t reflect that.  If you tip only on the bill, both the restaurant and server are now out of pocket.  The resulting chorus of complaints will yield rising corkage fees or restaurants deciding against allowing outside bottles altogether — and both are bad for winelovers.  My policy will be to add a full corkage fee to the tip and still come out ahead on the total cost, particularly because of my discount through the Wine Guild!

Enjoy your wines everyone!