Is the waitress someone who people who knew her might call an idiot? Is she someone that people would say would consider scheming to jack her 18% tip up to cover her month’s rent or car payment?
Or…
Is the person who asked for the bottle a grifter-type who gets off laughing to friends about how he ordered he most expensive bottle on the menu, swigged it down, and didn’t pay a nickle for it?
Someone who’d brag things like “Yeah, I dropped a bundle down there, but Man, you should SEE how I got even with the Borgata…” ?
Wasn’t there, don’t know the players, so I just can’t say.
Never had wine from a multi-thousand-dollar bottle, but I have from a few multi-hundred-dollar bottles. And it was consistently impressive. Maybe not worth 10 times as much as that $40/bottle stuff, but certainly distinct from it.
Not to nitpick, but there is a huge difference between a waitress (server) and sommelier. If a sommelier was engaged in this type of situation then I would certainly expect that their actions would be severely reprimanded for failure to properly communicate the information to the buyer.
It is impossible to tell from the information presented whether or not the buyer was deliberately trying to scam the restaurant but it is also clear to me that the waitress failed to properly identify the bottle ordered by pointing explicitly to the wine list and asking “is this what you want” or something to that effect.
The fact that this is the 2nd most expensive 750 ml bottle on the wine list also lends creedance to the argument that the waitress was merely trying to jack up the cost of the bill.
IMHO, a reasonable person, based on the information conveyed by the waitress would have expected a charge of $37.50 for the bottle and should not have to pay more than that. The only counter to this would be that the person ordering had made a comment or comments suggesting they knew more about wine than indicated and were, in fact, trying to scam the restaurant.
A friend of mine inherited wine from a relative whose family were winemakers in Bordeaux. Tons of old and great bottles. I guess not the stuff that would sold for $ 4000, although frankly I wouldn’t know and some of these bottles were really old. For years, that’s the wine we drank during our sessions of role-playing games or boardgames.
Most people were extatic about the wines, most of the time. Personnally, I couldn’t tell the difference with any regular wine of acceptable quality. And it left me totally indifferent because I don’t care about wine. If I had to compare it with another wine at the time, I assume that I would have told the taste was different, but I couldn’t have said that one was better than another. I couldn’t have told that one was exceptional and the other ordinary.
Just because it was old doesn’t necessarily mean it was either good or great. The vintage (year the grapes were harvested from) would have a lot to do with the quality along with the cellaring (storage) conditions and the fact that not all Bordeaux (or any other location for that matter) wines are made for aging.
In the case of the OP, we are talking about a young 2011 Screaming Eagle Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon (75% Cab Sav) that lists at retail from $1800 to $2400 according to several wine websites.
Screaming Eagle, while a silly name, was one of the first small batch, “boutique” wines that established an exclusive subscription list and built up hype.
Amongst CA wine geeks, it is amongst the tippy top, but yeah, silly and very obscure name to non-winos…
I think the guy is lucky that he didn’t really like the wine. Had he thought it was great he may have said, “Waiter can we have a couple more bottles of the Screaming Eagle over here?”
This guy did. Thinking she meant 37.50. I would have thought the same thing. Based on the prices for food, almost $40 for a nice bottle of wine sounds about right.
Turns out it was three-thousand, seven-hundred-and-fifty :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: OMG you can buy a nice used car for that. That’ll pay for one semester tuition at a state college.
Even worse, that identical bottle of wine retails for $1000 and this restaurant marks it up 275%
In my world a decimal is **always **implied. thirty seven fifty is 37.50 Does this guy have any legal recourse against this scam?
I looked up this restaurant, the site said prices start at $50. That would give me a hint that the wine costs more than $37.50, but getting the whole story straight has been difficult. See the other thread for a lot of details and assumptions.
Waitress says a bottle of wine is thirty seven fifty. Would you buy it?
No. I find wine to be horribly overpriced at restaurants, and I appear to have the palate of an earthworm. I do like going to wineries and having a few bottles there with friends but I will not pay restaurant prices for wine.
Interesting thing. Visited my parents last week. My Dad likes Charles Shaw, the infamous “two buck Chuck”, which is an okay wine. My brother brought another bottle because he was getting tired of the “two buck Chuck”. He is not a wine nut, but someone (he thinks it was me, but it wasn’t) had long ago given him a bottle of 1992 Chateau Mouton Rothschild. I got half-glass (my usual portion) on my second trip to the kitchen, knowing it was a different wine that my brother brought, but not knowing if it was any good. It was quite obviously a first class wine just by taste, and I grabbed the bottle to see what it was and found out. I was surprised that my brother had such wines, which is when he claimed I gave it to him. I’m certain I didn’t. I’ve given him Chilean Rothschild, but not real Bordeauxs.
