How to order wine in a French restaurant

Choosing wine to drink at home can be quite daunting. Choosing bottles to take to a dinner party even more so. But the most stressful, surely, is choosing wine in a restaurant. 

I started to get into wine in my 20s and, being considered the knowledgeable one, was usually tasked with choosing the wine when dining with friends in restaurants. I know how scary it can be.

Like most people, I would play safe and stick to styles of wine that I knew and that everyone would like. In those days, nine times out of ten I chose Australian, New Zealand or another New World wine. 

Even if I didn’t know the actual wine, at least the grape varieties would be listed. I didn’t have the encyclopaedic knowledge required to choose a French or Italian wine, which was only listed by its region of production. 

As I learnt more about French wine, I became more confident with choosing those wines. I knew that Chinon was a medium-bodied, fruity red and that Gigondas was a more powerful version of Côtes du Rhône. 

I’d memorised the difference between Pouilly-Fumé (Sauvignon blanc from the Loire) and Puilly-Fuissé (Chardonnay from the Mâcon) and learned not to bother trying Burgundy or Saint-Emilion in a chain restaurant.

Even though I’m now what most people would consider a wine expert, I still get sweaty palms when choosing wines from a French restaurant wine list. 

Wine pricing

This sense of fear is why the most popular wine sold in almost every restaurant is the second cheapest one on the list. Nobody wants to appear to be a miser by getting the cheapest but 99% of diners have never heard of any of the more expensive choices and French wine lists remain pretty uninformative about the style of their wines. 

Many restaurants price their wines by applying a multiplier to their cost. 

The most common is three times the retail price. Personally I think this deters people from choosing the more expensive, and presumably better, wines on the list because the markup increases with the price. 

I much prefer restaurants who have a fixed service charge on all their wines but they are not the norm.

I also prefer to chat to the waiter or sommelier about which wine they would recommend, based on the dishes chosen. However, some waiters can be quite ignorant and some sommeliers can be snooty and aloof. 

When I’m dining in restaurants in my local region, where I’m familiar with most of the producers and know the subtleties of the various terroirs, I often find it uncomfortable speaking to the wine waiter. 

In the touristy restaurants the choices are often poor and the advice is usually “this is a good wine because it’s local”. In the more up-market ones I sometimes feel the sommelier can be more interested in making me drink what he/she personally likes than listening to my requirements. 

Another recent trait among sommeliers is to push customers into choosing Natural wines that they believe are trendy. 

In my experience most normal people (including wine connoisseurs) don’t like the taste of Natural wines because they often contain faults. If the sommelier has tattoos, a sculpted beard and piercings, I generally avoid asking their advice because one of us is going to get offended. 

Some restaurants make an effort to describe the style of their wines on the list and this can be really helpful. I don’t know why more don’t do it. Maybe part of the issue is that in France, wines must by law be listed by their Appellation. 

Wines from an AOP cannot be listed in the same section as those from an IGP. Therefore, you won’t see lists like you might find in the UK or USA where wines are organised by style. 

Learn the pairings

However, some progressive restaurants suggest wine pairings for their menu. Some even offer a “tasting” menu with a different wine for each dish. These can be a great way to discover new wines and interesting taste combinations and also take away the stress of choosing the wine yourself.

Another pet-peeve of mine is the poor selection of wines offered by the glass. In a world where people are consuming less wine, especially at lunch, and more conscious of drink-driving, it seems crazy for restaurants to only offer the majority of their wines by the bottle. 

Very often the only wines we can choose by the glass are cheap (and often nasty) Bag-in-Box ones. 

One restaurant I ate in recently even took away the good wine glasses on the table and replaced them with little Paris Goblets because I hadn’t bought a full bottle! 

Imagine them downgrading your cutlery and plate because you ordered the plat du jour instead of à la carte! I’m happy to give a 5* review for restaurants with several good wines available by the glass and served in proper wine glasses.

Even if you survive the anxiety attack caused by perusing a list of unknown wines and the showdown with the overly opinionated sommelier, you will then be faced with the stress of tasting the wine before it is served. 

Most people don’t know what to do and go through the motions before accepting whatever they are poured. Even experts are unsure. Are you only supposed to refuse the wine if it is obviously corked? What if the sommelier disagrees? Can you refuse or return a wine if there is something else wrong or if you simply don’t like it? 

When to send wine back

The jury seems to be out on this topic. Last week I joined in a social media discussion on the Revue du Vin de France page. 

Many commenters believed you should only refuse a wine if it was corked. Myself and several others disagreed. We felt that if the wine does not live up to the sommelier’s description, has another kind of fault or isn’t at all representative of the style of wine from its Appellation, the customer has the right to request another bottle. 

However, some sommeliers reported stories of customers choosing expensive wines off the list, refusing them for no good reason and then switching to a much cheaper wine. 

Learning more about French wine names and knowing the general style of wines made in the various regions is a big advantage when it comes to choosing wine in restaurants. Having the vocabulary to discuss your preferences with the sommelier is also useful. A bit of wine knowledge goes a long way to avoiding PTSD and having to choose that “second cheapest wine” every time you dine out. 

Jonathan Hesford studied oenology and viticulture in New Zealand, is a member of the Association of Wine Educators and the winemaker and owner of Domaine Treloar in the Roussillon.