Lucy Feng Wu

Professor Goodlad

HMGT 2402

March 29, 2020

Wine List Analysis

For this analysis, I will be comparing a fine dining wine list and a casual dining wine list to see their similarities and difference. The restaurants I chose for this analysis are River Café and Blue Ribbon.

River Café is a Michelin-starred restaurant in Brooklyn. River Café features a classic American menu paired with one of the most outstanding wine list in the world. Some interesting details I noticed in River Café’s wine list is that the first page is the cover with the names of the Wine Director, Head Sommelier and the two Sommeliers of River Café. Also, at the bottom of each page it has a legend that indicates the level of sweetness of each wine starting with one star for slightly sweet and increasing for sweet, very sweet and extremely sweet. I noticed this list has 18 pages which is surprisingly short compared to others fine dining restaurant.

Blue Ribbon is a dining room and friendly well known for being a late night restaurant that opens from 4pm to 4am. Blue Ribbon offers brasserie seafood, American dishes and beverages to pair with the food. Looking at Blue Ribbon’s wine list, I noticed that it is very easy to read and very straightforward wine list composed of 4 pages. As for the beer and cider section of this list, it has the percentage of alcohol of each beverage besides their names.

Moving into the similarities of these two wine lists, I have noticed that both lists first section is wine by glass and both of them listed champagne and sparkling wines first, white wines second, rose wines third and red wine at last. Also, both section are very similar in format because both lists name the wine starting by the grape variety.

I have noticed more difference than similarities in this analysis. The most notable difference is the large variety of wines that fine dining restaurants wine lists have and the price are different from casual dining restaurants. Another difference is that each wine lists section of wine bottles are arranged differently. Blue Ribbon’s list separated white wines and red wines and segmented them by grape variety. On the other hand, River Café separated white wines and red wines from France and segmented them by country and grouped them according to each wines specific region and appellation.

In conclusion, fining dining and casual dining restaurants has similar format for wine list. However, fining dining has a larger selection of wines than casual dining which give them the opportunity to group wines by country, and for French wines, by region and appellation. Also, River Café wine list is suitable for people who know about wines since the section of French wines does not include their grape variety.