Pro Somms on Fortified Wines & Their Challenges

[Roy Hersh]

Phenomenal article: http://www.guildsomm.com/TC/stay_curren ... nges-today

[Bradley Bogdan]

Great article, even better intro


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[Moses Botbol]

Great article. If restaurants want to sell more bottles of fortified wines, how about introducing a wine dinner line up that includes a whole evening of bottles; pre-picked including a port or what have you? How about suggesting a fortified bottle to be opened on the onset of the evening when the consumer is first looking at the menu? Stock up on more half bottles... Make the dessert and post dinner sound more important than the dinner itself... Introduce a more port friendly kind of menu as the main event...

[Andy Velebil]

The most commonly reported place for fortified wines to be listed on the menu is on the dessert menu—dry styles included. But nearly equal parts of respondents also said they list their fortified wines both in the dessert menu and in another part of the menu… usually the back or bottom of the list, though frequently with dry wines listed in their own section.

My biggest pet peeve. When I am in a restaurant and I can see Port/Madeira bottles on the shelf yet when I look at the wine list there is no mention at all. I have to ask for the other "second" wine list which has it. WTF do you need two wine lists and why is one a defacto secret list you get at the end of the meal, and only if you ask for it? If they put Port and Madeira in the main wine list with everything else then people will see it, and most likely, order it more often. Or if people see it early on in the meal they can plan ahead to have one less glass of wine and plan on getting a fortified wine at the end. It really is piss poor wine list management on the restaurant's part. If you want to sell more of something then don't make it hard for your customers to buy.