I always enjoy having a good wine paired with my meal when dining out. However a wine list may draw people crazy, so do I when I haven’t started studying wine. Two wine lists, from a fine-dining restaurant and a casual dining restaurant, will be analysed and compared in this essay.
The River Cafe is Michelin-starred fine-dining restaurant located in Brooklyn Bridge Park. It offers a New American cuisine menu and stunning view of the Manhattan skyline. Roberta’s, has three locations in the city, also serves New American cuisine. It is famous for its oven baked pizza, topped with vegetables from their own rooftop garden. Both wine lists of the two restaurants can be found online.
There is a great selection in River Cafe. They listed every wine very clearly by separating the style, serving size and country, followed by the region. You can find champagne, sparkling, rose, Porto, Madeira, sherry, fortified, white and red wine. Wines are from France, Italy, North America, Germany, New York State, Austria, Spain, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand and Greece. Glass of wine is priced from $15 to $120. Bottle of wine is priced from $44 to $8700. Roberta also serves great variety wines. The wine list is also arranged well by the style and country. You can find sparking, champagne, white, orange, rose and red. Wines are from France, Italy, America, Austria, Germany and Spain. Glass of wine is priced from $12 to $17. Bottle of wine is priced from $42 to $300.
Both wine lists provided a wide selection of wine from different places. In both lists, each wine listed is introduced by description of brand, grape variety, region, country and vintage. I observed two differences. On the left hand side on the River Cafe’s wine list, there is a number written before each wine listed but I didn’t see this happen on Roberta’s wine list. I am guessing the River Cafe really has a huge selection of wine or they rotate different wines frequently. Hence, a series of code numbers is created for better management. River Cafe also serves half bottle sparkling, white and red wine while Roberta’s doesn’t. I am not too sure how it works before. I searched it up and learnt that it is like a mini-bottle, 375mL, which looks like dessert wine. In the process of comparing two wine lists, the word “magnums” appealed a few times. I also searched it up and learnt that it means a size of 1.5L.
River Cafe Wine List (2019, October 24. Retrieved from
https://rivercafe.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/rivercafe-winelist-10-24-19.pdf
Roberta’s Wine List Retrieved from
https://www.robertaspizza.com/storage/bushwickwine.pdf
Guide to Wine Bottle Sizes. (2019, September 7). Retrieved from
https://winefolly.com/tips/wine-bottle-sizes/
How Many Glasses in a Bottle of Wine. (2019, September 9). Retrieved from
https://winefolly.com/tips/how-many-glasses-bottle-wine/
I was happy to read your post because I also researched the River Cafe. I was happy to see that they had wine by the glass at decent prices to accomodate all customers. You were correct about them having a larger selection that they rotate. In the basement of the restaurant they have a large wine cellar that the sommeliers walk through daily to select wines weekly, add wines, and other things like that.
The codes refer to “bin numbers”. The bin numbers help the person locating the wine in the cellar know where to find it. It is a system of organization. I like that you mentioned.