How Not to Serve Wine

(WineSpectator) - Why is it so difficult for some restaurants to get it right?

So there we were in a very fancy, high-end restaurant in the Palanco district of Mexico City, the swankiest precinct of one of the world's largest cities. Although Mexico City is hardly awash in fine wine, it's not a backwater either. There's a growing number of wine importers and distributors. Not least, there's a small but impassioned contingent of wine lovers.

Knowing this, Mexico City's best restaurants offer pretty decent wine lists. Granted, they're not in the same big leagues as San Francisco or New York. But as a wine lover, you won't be slumming, either. In short, at the restaurant high-end, you're seeing a nicely emerging wine culture.

Service, however, is lagging a bit behind. A wine culture, after all, is more than just having good bottles.

Anyway, we're seated in the fancy restaurant and the would-be sommelier (I'm not sure that he either had that title or, for that matter, deserved it) comes over to hand the wine list to someone in our party of four. Of course, everyone pointed at me. Then it began.

First, he hands me the list, opened wide to a purposely chosen page. That page, I soon discovered, was the one that had the restaurant's most expensive wines, which were Burgundies and Bordeaux.

Now, I'm not a fan of buying expensive wines on restaurant lists. Partly it's a matter of personal economics. But mostly it's because there's no sport in choosing expensive wines. The real fun is finding the hidden jewels. Also, I like to choose wines that allow me to tell a story to my dining companions.