Washington Park, the Manhattan restaurant owned by celebrity chef Jonathan Waxman, provides the perfect setting for a Fifth Avenue power meal -- excellent food, sophisticated clientele, critical acclaim, top-flight service. It also presents a conundrum for the host of said power meal: a wine list on which a bottle of red can run you $13,000.
Granted, it's a big bottle. A magnum of red Bordeaux -- the 1947 Chateau Cheval Blanc, to be precise. And doubtless it would go nicely with a rib-eye. But these are hard times, and ordering a bottle of wine that goes for the same price as a new Hyundai smacks of the kind of hubris not seen in the business world in, oh, three or four years. If ordering an expensive bottle once signified decisiveness, flamoyance, and power, today it reveals a rather unappetizing cluelessness.
This being the case, how do you show your mettle these days when you're handed the wine list before a table full of clients? The list at Washington Park is a daunting tome -- 80 pages listing more than 1,400 different wines, many priced at hundreds or thousands of dollars. The endless columns of Bordeaux and Burgundy, Napa Valley cabernets and Italian Barolos can turn the first 10 minutes of an otherwise pleasant meal into a nightmare of indecision and helplessness.
Unless, that is, you've been let in on a reassuring secret: You can treat your dinner guests to a terrific bottle of wine without dropping more than $50, no matter where you're eating.
Just ask John Slover, Washington Park's unpretentious 33-year-old sommelier. "If you can't get a great bottle of wine for between $30 and $50," he says, "the wine people at the restaurant aren't doing their job." Connoisseurs like Slover understand that good wine doesn't have to cost much and that some of the least expensive bottles in the cellar are also some of the most exciting. They know this because even given the choice among 1,400 bottles, even the most studied connoisseurs will always get satisfaction from unearthing an unheralded bottle from among the masses.
So leave the paycheck prices for hardcore oenophiles and the kind of people who don't know how to handle their corporate cards. Look instead for the insider wines, the less expensive ones that often earn instant admiration from the wine staff -- and from your tablemates.
Experiment
For most people, the strategy for choosing a wine is to tread on familiar territory -- merlot, chardonnay, cabernet sauvignon. This is a safe (if sometimes boring) bet for your taste buds, but not always for your wallet. Many restaurants inflate the prices of popular wines, preying on customers' insecurities. "The wines you've already been schooled on are the expensive wines," says Jonathan Waters, the sommelier at the famed Chez Panisse in Berkeley, California, where the wine list changes daily. "With a big-name cabernet, for instance, a restaurant can ask any price it wants."
If you want to sidestep this problem, do what Bernie Sun, the head sommelier at the upscale Manhattan eatery Montrachet, recommends: Try something new. "The wines you don't recognize, those are the ones you may want to concentrate on," says Sun. Scan the list for wines you've never heard of with names you can't pronounce -- forego a chardonnay for a Tocai Friulano, a Savennières, or a Pouilly-Fuissè. Skip a tired merlot in favor of a Barbera d'Alba, a Faugères, or a rioja. Don't be afraid to ask about pronunciation -- not many people know how to say "Savennières, Clos de la Bergerie, Nicholas Joly," but that's no reason to miss out on a great bottle of wine. "The best thing to hear," says Waters, "is that someone is open to trying something new."
In your search for the new and unusual, don't abandon your price point -- if you want to stick to 50 bucks, stick to 50 bucks. The restaurant most likely serves some very good wines in your range. And any embarrassment you might feel over the low price is completely unnecessary. "People sometimes avoid the cheapest wines," says Waters. "But I wouldn't put something on the list if it weren't good."
Get Help
"When you're dealing with a big list, the best rule of thumb is to talk to the wine guy," says Montrachet's Sun. Contrary to popular belief, the "wine guy," or sommelier, is your friend. Enlisting the services of the sommelier is as easy as flagging down your waiter, and it does not necessarily signal that you seek an expensive bottle. A good sommelier is just as adept at helping you discover a good, cheap wine on the list.
Still, knowing what to say can be tricky. Though most of us will happily parse the subtle differences between Coke and Pepsi, our oenological vocabularies are decidedly less impressive. So keep it simple. Tell the sommelier or a wine-savvy server whether you'd like red or white, that you're up for trying something new, and that you want something under a certain price. It's their job to work within your parameters. If your steward speaks quietly and points to bottles in your range without mentioning prices, you're in good hands. "I love it when someone says, 'I want a wine that's unusual and a good value,'" says Slover. "I love it when someone says, 'I want to spend thirty bucks.'" The reason is simple: It's a challenge. It's easy to recommend a $250 bottle and watch everyone pretend it's the best juice they've ever tasted. But many sommeliers will tell you that educating a customer about the virtues of an unheralded -- and inexpensive -- beauty can be an even more satisfying achievement. If a wine steward makes a show of nudging your price up, announcing to the table that for more dough you could get something else, he could simply be trying to show you a better wine -- but there's a decent chance he's in it for the sale, knowing you won't want to look like a cheapskate. Stand your ground. Thank him and politely tell him you'll pick something out yourself.
Go Euro
In the absence of a sommelier -- or in the presence of an unhelpful server -- you're on your own. The rule of thumb in this case is to go European. There are great wines from the New World -- California and Australia, for example -- but the inexpensive ones usually offer less value than European bottles in the same price range. And you can find the decent inexpensive ones (Ravenswood Zinfandel, Rosemount Shiraz, and most anything from Beringer) in many supermarkets. By contrast, Old World countries -- France, Italy, Spain, Germany -- draw upon centuries of winemaking tradition and make the best inexpensive wines in the world. Thus a $30 Guigal Cótes du Rhóne (from southern France) will almost always be a more interesting wine than a $30 Blackstone California merlot. White wines that typically deliver a lot for their price include Riesling (usually from Germany), Vouvray and Sancerre (France), and Verdicchio (Italy). In the mood for red? Try a Cóteaux du Languedoc (from France), a Barbera (Italy and California), or a rioja (Spain).
Whatever you choose to order, you'll enjoy it a little more knowing that your selection was based on skill, knowledge, and a sense of adventure -- and not on the simple fact that you've tasted chardonnay before
