What’s Wrong With Wine Lists?
There are two types of pretentious wine list: one which pretends to be a wine list and one which tries its darnedest to impress you. Both styles of list, however, default to the tried and trusted; it is as if wine-buyers and sommeliers are fearful of omitting certain wines. The result of playing it safe is the increasing standardisation of wine lists at all levels, a kind of levelling down of expectation.
How often have we gone into a bar, pub or brasserie and been given a so-called “eclectic list” that professes to provide a balanced selection of grape varieties from various countries? The choice is illusory. Insipid Pinot Grigio? Check. Vegetal Chilean Merlot? Check. Sweet, confected Rioja? Check. Every obvious style, name or brand is duly (and dully) present and correct. This presupposes (falsely) that customers cannot cope without a digest of familiar names. Such lists, by trying to be wilfully unpretentious, achieve the opposite effect; those who compile them assume that customers have no desire whatsoever to drink or explore beyond a perceived comfort zone of known names and bland brands and thereby elevate the lowest common denominator of taste to the norm.
The flipside of this coin is the compendious volume engorged with must-have wines, the result of a magpie instinct to collect renowned growers and appellations. These lists are usually full of sound and fury – signifying high prices. You will usually discover within their hallowed leather-bound covers half a dozen Sancerres, multiple examples of Chablis and a score of Puligny-Montrachets. Often such lists are magnificent in scope yet curiously narrow in diversity. Even though the wines may be excellent there is no controlling voice or sense of discrimination, just the desire to impress with exhaustive choice.
The most thought-provoking and original wine lists are unburdened by convention, illustrating that you don’t need to second-guess your customers, impress them with trophy wines or cherish the sacred cows of the wine world. A great list is driven primarily by passion and is not hidebound by expectation or format; it is thus the antithesis of the lazy, eclectic list or the classic voluminous catalogue that tries to be all things to all people.