How to Beat an Overpriced Wine List

(GQ) - We’ve all had the experience of sitting down for dinner with a date or a client at an unfamiliar restaurant and having to deal with a wine list where every bottle seems to be in triple figures. Alan Richman, GQ’s wine expert—and proud bearer of the title Cheapest Man Alive—reveals the secrets to finding values on an expensive wine list.

In wine, as in life, money doesn’t buy happiness.

A willingness to pay a respectable amount for a bottle on a wine list is no guarantee that what you drink will be worth the price, especially in these oenologically perilous times. Care for a lovely Sancerre? The 2012 Yves Martin Chavignol costs a restaurant owner less than $16. I just saw it on a wine list in the West Village for $76. Aubry Brut champagne? For the same owner, $29. For you, $97. Wines by the glass are worse. If you’re paying $13 for a glass, wherever you are, the restaurant owner almost certainly paid less than that for the bottle. Money and wine are no longer in harmony. These days, restaurants think money grows on vines.

The good news is that a new age is upon us, one in which people who understand and appreciate wine are becoming partners in restaurants. They’re sommeliers and wine directors who fell in love with their professions over the past twenty years and now have different goals. They’re looking to expand their appreciation of wine by becoming owners, and they no longer want to stand on their feet in dining rooms seven nights a week. In Manhattan, within the past year, Charlie Bird, Estela, and Pearl & Ash have opened. At all three, wine drinking is thought of as an essential aspect of a joyful dining experience, not purely as a profit center.