Wine List Analysis

Wan Ying Hu

The River cafe is a American fine dining restaurant located at 1 Water St, Brooklyn, NY 1120. It is known to have the most romantic setting in New York City. It is a Michelin-Starred restaurant. This restaurant is on top of a dock right beneath the Brooklyn Bridge with a breathtaking view overlooking the NYC skyline. When you’re dining inside the restaurant it seems as if you’re on a boat because the East ocean is right beneath you. There’s also live piano music played by Dom Salvador who have been playing there for 41 years. The River Cafe is owned by Michael O’Keeffe and was opened in 1977. At The River Cafe, they serve brunch, lunch and dinner at a fixed price. They also have a vegetarian menu for those who don’t eat meat. Olive Garden is American casual dining restaurant chain. It is a italian-American cuisine that was first started in 1982. The first restaurant was in Orlando Florida and spreaded all over the world to Brazil, Canada, El Salvador, UAE, Kuwait, Mexico, and Panama with a total of 892 restaurants. Olive garden is family friendly and offers kids meals and entertainment for them. 

The River Cafe’s wine list has many wines from all around the world like France, Germany, Italy, Austria, Spain, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, Greece, and the United states. The wines list from France comes from the major regions that produce wine like Loire, Bordeaux, Burgundy, Champagne, Alsace, and Rhone and these are separated into different sections. The wines could be purchased as full size, half the bottle, ¼ bottle or by glass. The price varies depending on the grape variety, region and the vintage. Each category of the wines starts from most recent vintage to oldest. Olive Garden’s wine list is very simple, only offers 8 different types of wines 4 white and 4 red. Their wines are either from France, Italy or California. On their wine list it shows which paring goes well with different types of meats. The wine is sold in 6 oz glass, 9 oz quartino or a bottle. 

The most obvious significant difference is that The river cafe’s wine list is significantly longer and more detailed, versus Olive Gardens wine list is short and simple. Olive gardens wine list doesn’t show the vintage of the bottles versus The river cafe shows their vintage and the vintages can go all the way back to the late 19 hundreds. Some similarities are that both the restaurant wine list distinguish the sweeter wines to more robust and rich wines. After viewing both the wine list I learned that magnum means 1.5 liters. Someone who hasn’t studied wine will look at the The river cafes wine list and have no clue what to order unless they are on a budget.  I also learned that reading wine lists is hard to figure out which is what without being oenology.