Wine complaint by Ronan Sayburn

Wine complaint

The other day we had a complaint about wine service in one of our hotels, to be honest this is quite rare but i rang the customer to find out what had happened. He told me that the sommelier was opening bottles of wine and then taking and drinking some of the wine, and that it was a disgraceful practice that he had never see anywhere in the world and that he had eaten for years in the best restaurants in the world (you know the type). So I wearily went on to explain that in most restaurants that take wine service seriously this is standard practice and its a courtesy paid from one customer to the next to allow the sommelier to taste the wines so that he can accurately describe them in the future. I tactfully pointed out that it does go on but maybe he had never seen it before. He was having none of it. So I offered he come back to the bar some time for a free drink, not as an apology for our operating procedure but as a sign of good will. But he wanted more (you know the type). Then the killing blow came, he said:

"Even the champagne expert on Michel Roux's programme does not do that!"

So I asked, "is that the bald headed Englishman?"

"Yes"

"Thats me"

.....pause.....

"Well good for you then!"

Hangs up.

What a magical moment!

1 comment

Mark D. 17-02-2011

It's strange but until you just put it like that, I never really thought of it as my own tuition. I always thought it was we (the sommelier) doing the customer the service of making sure faulty wine never reaches the table, and that's certainly how I explained it to the customers (which probably illicited a more sympathetic response from said customer). But you are right the amount of learning that just passes your lips without thinking, yet sticks in your brain.

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