A common enough trope - a barfly walks into a bar, the bartender brings over a shot glass and a bottle. They pour a shot, turn to walk off and the patron says, “Leave the bottle”.
How do figure out how much you owe? Or does that even happen in real life?
Many clubs/bars have bottle prices on a some of their alcohol choices, but you don’t buy a shot from a half empty bottle and then say “Leave the bottle” in those situations. Instead your initial order is more likely to be “1 Macallan 12, 2 Veuve, please”
Dunno if it happens in real life, but the idea is (I think), the patron is buying the entire bottle.
And paying a rather hefty price on it I’d think. Even if the bar sells at by-the-bottle prices instead of 750 ml = ~ 25 ounces * anywhere from $2 to $7 per ounce shots, they’re still likely to be charging a lot more for that bottle than Discount Liquors would.
Yeah, the bar would be selling 10-15 shots from that bottle, so I’m assuming the price of “feeling sorry for yourself” would be expensive.
Does make me wonder if it’s a “cliche tough guy movie” thing. Never seen it in real life.
I bought a bottle of Sam Adams Utopias (beer) at least once. I shared it with friends, doing shots. It was around $120 if my pickle brain remembers correctly, circa 2009.
It has to be legal to serve that way. They will mark the bottle at the level when you start. Sometimes just on the label, or on a piece of tape on the side, or they may use something like a grease pencil. At the end they’ll come up with a number some way or another. It’s not going to be done accurately, that would destroy your romantic notion of drinking the way Hemingway did, and you’re drunk too so you’ll think you got a good deal.
I’ve seen bars in Thailand where you can buy fifths of Johnnie Walker Red or Black for as little as $60 including free mixers.
Using typical Atlanta prices, the sample order I gave earlier would be $750. $300 for the Macallan 12, $225 each for the Veuve. You also get some juice and soda mixers thrown in. At most clubs you also get a table included with your bottle service, the size of which is typically dependent on a minimum number of bottles (or spend in some cases). So a single bottle might get you a table for 2 to 4 people in a less desirable location.
I was at an Italian restaurant in Vancouver about twenty years ago that did this. There were two bottles of house wine on your table; one red and one white. There was a “ruler” made of cardboard, shaped to include the neck of the bottle, and it was calibrated in ounces. The starting level was marked on the ruler, and you could drink as much as you liked. At the end of your meal, the finishing level was marked on the ruler, and you paid for the ounces you consumed.
They did have a wine list, which offered bottles, but if all you wanted was a glass or two of the house wine, it was a handy way to offer it.
Big difference between those. That’s a great price for the Black (for a bar), but I wouldn’t pay 10% of that for the Red.
And then they stopped doing it when too many customers would order several glasses of water and a funnel.
Siam (Mr Sam) did not fully explain but many other things are also cheap in Thailand. It works because rent and wages are low.
For locally produced spirits, the prices can be much lower, as low as $10.
But nobody goes alone like this without expecting company.
I ran a movie projector in the back room of a bar, in college. I once observed a patron order something, and, upon observing that the bottle was low, inquire as to whether there was another bottle of the same on hand. On being informed that the only other bottle of that type of alcohol was a different brand, the patron, in language other than “leave the bottle” requested that what was left in the bottle be reserved for him. The bartender, instead of replacing the bottle with the others, put it aside, and served only that patron from it.
I do not know this person’s name, but I can tell you he was a regular at the bar, as I knew his face. He came into the films about once a month, usually sober at the beginning, but would order at least two drinks, usually more, so the waitress would not have to interrupt the film, and would be pretty red-faced by the end.
So I’d say that when the bartender put the bottle aside, he had fair confidence the guy would finish it, and even if he didn’t, someone who was going to come back the next weekend, and the next, would come back happy, and probably tip well.
Just an example of this playing out in the real world. Like a lot of things, lengthier, and messier than the concise Hollywood version.
Also, I cannot say whether this would be done for a stranger, but I doubt it.
It’s traditional/customary in many bars for the last drink from a bottle to be free. I’ve been at a bar, bored, studying the back bar for near empty bottles, then ordering a shot that I get for free.
Also, the last of a kicked keg (less than a pint) is typically free. I’ve had a bartender alert me, for instance, that the Bell’s Two Hearted is gonna kick, allowing me to order it and get a free partial pint.
Same topic from 2001:
Would it be wrong to note that at any number of places in Thailand that offer such a deal, the odds of getting actual JW Black are 50/50 at best?
New York City club version:
They call it a fifth because it’s a fifth of a gallon. That means let’s see…25.6 ounces x whatever per shot.
IANAL but wouldn’t this fall under “Just because you [bartender] can doesn’t mean you should?” You’d give up the opportunity to cut them off when they’ve had too much too fast, for instance.
Yes, but the basic question is how it works. That’s how it works, you pay a set price for the bottle and get mixers. But now that I think of it, in that scenario you go in ordering the bottle. You don’t just take a shot from the bartender and then say to leave the already-partially empty bottle it was just poured from. That’s just in the movies, like those fire sprinklers that all go off in an entire building despite the sensor in only one sprinkler head detecting heat.