Taking Our Own Wine to Restaurants
 

We are 4 adults traveling to D.C. next month and would like to bring our own wine to restaurants for our dinners. Is there a problem with most restaurants if we do this? We know that we would be charged a corkage fee and that's not a problem for us.

Best thing to do is call the restaurant.

Most restaurants will not be happy with this, since they make a lot of profit on wine and drinks. Definitely call in advance - and don't be surprised by either a no or a significant corkage fee.

My hubby and I have a wine cellar full of very good Napa Valley wines and we were hoping to ship a dozen bottles to our friends (who will be driving down from NJ). This way, we would have the wine we all enjoy for the duration of our "road trip". We always bring extra wine to California restaurants to share with our server and manager and they always enjoy the wines and appreciate the gesture. We were hoping we could do the same thing in D.C. I didn't want to bother shipping the wine if the great majority of restaurants wouldn't allow it anyway.

Even in California, it's not good to take a wine that they have on their wine list. Definitely call ahead, as nytraveler suggested.

Agree with above posts..
Most restaurants if its on there wine list won't let you bring in your own..some could care less..I think with the economy they are relaxing the rules..anything to get you in the door.
check there website and call..speak to a manager..sometimes corkage is almost as much as the wine..we have paid as high as $40 to $10..I've always wanted as a joke to bring some 2 buck chuck and have them open it.
We love our wine and most of the time our bar bill is more than our food bill..;)

Oh - and I definitely would not expect your server and manager to drink YOUR wine, even if bringing your own isn't a problem.

Separately, not sure how you would ship to New Jersey - do you have a shipper that will send random bottles of wine?

Our friends bring wine from their extensive cellar every time we eat at a nice restaurant in San Francisco. They (and we) never call ahead, we've never looked ahead at their wine list and we've never had anything but gracious acceptance (and a corkage fee, which we fully expect). We've been doing this for nearly 30 years.

nyt, I think it's considered the "thing to do" to OFFER a taste from your bottle to the sommelier.

Sommeliers and waitstaff usually are very appreciative of offers of BYOB wine, especially if your wine is not the usual stuff.

There is a thread on Mark Squire's wine website on erobertparker.com on BYOB restaurants.
My experience is that most restaurants that allow BYOB do not allow you to bring the same wine on their wine list. Corkage fees vary from 0 to $70 in my experience with $10 to $30 being most common. You can find a list of DC restaurants that allow BYOB here: http://www.wideworldofwines.com/corkage.php

I can say from my daughter's experience at a high end restaurant and being a sommelier that the manager and sommelier do indeed enjoy tasting a special wine if offered by a customer.

Thank you, everyone, for your input.

We live in the SF Bay Area and have never encountered a problem bringing our own wine to a restaurant. We've never called ahead and we've never checked their wine list ahead of time. It is actually rare to find one of our wines on their wine lists. The restaurant staff always appreciate tasting our wine and we usually end up exchanging information and notes. We just didn't know how it would be taken in D.C.

And, MJS, thank you for the websites.....very valuable! My husband and I always enjoy different perspectives about different wines from people. (erobertparker.com)

As for our shipper..... When he sees us walking through the door with our box, he always asks, "More olive oil?" (wink,wink)