How can you save on wine mark-up at restaurants? Bring it from home and just pay corkage.
In Italy, wine is considered one of the nation’s symbols and is produced in all its regions during the harvest period in August and September. But, the cost of wine at restaurants can be high. Restaurants, in fact, rely on customers spending more on their wine than they would in a wine shop, but often they do not have a wine list to match the dishes offered on the menu. What can you do in such cases? Buy it from your trusted wine shop and bring it from home. How?
Corkage rights is a law introduced to encourage the sale of local products, letting you bring your favorite wine to the restaurant, where you obviously pay a small fee. We recommend that you agree this beforehand when making your table reservation.
Corkage works in a simple and intuitive way. The customer brings his wine from home and enjoys it during the meal served at the restaurant. The customer simply pays a fee for the wine service, called the “corkage fee” or “uncorking fee”, on the final bill, which includes uncorking the bottle, washing the glass, and any decanter use. This fee varies and often corresponds to the price of the least expensive wine on the restaurant’s wine list. In Italy, this generally works out at about €5-10, but some restaurants offer the service for free.
The wine shop is the perfect place to buy the best Italian and European wines and discover new wines to taste with friends or during a romantic dinner.
When people decide to go out to eat, they tend to associate wine with the dining experience and not with its quality. It is no accident that most people drink the wine that is served in the establishment because there is no alternative. In fact, it only takes a little effort to discover that there are numerous alternatives to buying wine at the restaurant. You can rely on your trusted wine shop, La Civiltà del Bere, to purchase your favorite wines in-store or online. Delivery usually takes a couple of days both domestically and internationally!
