Sorting The Grapes

As wine culture blooms, restaurants are putting more effort than ever in crafting their wine lists. But what makes a good list?

 

- Lin Weiwen

Wine service used to be simple. Back in the mid-90s, as part of my hospitality studies’ curriculum, I did frontline stints in a couple of fine dining restaurants. Sommeliers barely figured in the dining scene then. Thus, waiters became de facto sommeliers.

This was difficult for us. Wine was (and still is) complicated. Fortunately, our supervisors taught us five magic words to guide us through the murky valley of terroir and tannins: ‘Red: Cabernet Sauvignon. White: Chardonnay.’ It was enough to answer most of the guests’ queries. Diners weren’t as savvy then, and Sideways wasn’t filmed yet. Plus, the wine lists were usually less than a dozen pages—segmented by red, white and sweet— and only a handful of quaffs ventured beyond Cabernet and Chardonnay.

How things have changed. With the rise of the sommelier and the wine consumer, today’s wine lists have shed their status as mere appendices, and evolved into tomes of vinous options: sommeliers deconstruct wine, categorising them by regions, grapes, vintages, producers, flavours, and, of late, cult factors.

MORE OR LESS

Presenting such a large, diverse amount of vino information lucidly to the diner—via a list—is a challenging task. Sommeliers also have to play graphic designer when crafting the list: Is the layout neat? Does it flow well? Does this font make the extra zeros on the price tag look less daunting?

First impressions matter. Call it an occupational hazard, but I think a wine list is badly presented when I find myself flipping through it back and forth, trying to find a wine or section that is orphaned by misplaced headers or broken up paragraphs.