Chris,
At Hakkasan we charge corkage if people bring a bottle, and I'm always surprised how grateful some customers are. Apparently a lot of places make them feel like criminals for even asking. That said, it doesn't happen every day, and it's mainly people who want to bring something rather special. It makes them happy, and so it makes us happy too.

But a couple of points need to be made:
first, that a decent restaurant list is packed with wines that are difficult or impossible to find in the high street, so if you want to drink the exciting stuff, a restaurant is (or should be) one of the best places to do it.

Secondly, that the wholesalers who supply these wonderful wines need to make a living too, and any significant shift towards diners drinking ‘high street’ byo wines in restaurants is going to put pressure on these specialist merchants (and thus on some wineries too).

Tom Cannavan is right, then. If the BYO movement grows strongly, it will indeed ‘change wine’s place in fine dining permanently'. This change might benefit those with well-stocked cellars at home, but for most people it would cut off their access to many interesting wines, and remove a key distribution channel for some of the world's best winemakers.

We make an effort to charge a fair price for the wines on our list, and we're not against BYO. But, as they say, ‘be careful what you wish for’.