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When American wine earns its place on the list
American wine is not a patriotic tax. Put it on the list when it pairs, pours, and still leaves margin. Skip the token domestic back page.
Written by Marco Azzari on
American wine is not a patriotic tax. It earns a slot when it sits with the food, when the guest will order it, and when true cost still leaves a margin at a price the room will pay. A token "Domestic" dump at the back of the list is theater. A short, pourable American set next to the dishes that need it is a program.
California, Oregon, Washington, and New York carry most American lists, and wine from your own state can do a job none of them can: local pride the floor can talk about. If you read this outside the US, swap in your own country and region. The logic does not change.
Why the ghetto fails
Guests who wanted local already looked. Guests who did not will not travel to page four to be educated. If the Oregon Pinot Noir that belongs with the salmon is in a patriotic box, you hid the pairing.
Put the wine where the food is. Label origin in the line (Willamette Valley, Finger Lakes, Columbia Valley, your own county), not in a national prison.
Cost is the adult conversation
Some American bottles are expensive for what the guest will pay in a neighborhood room. Napa Cabernet is the obvious case: a $60 wholesale bottle only works at a menu price that looks like a dare. If true cost only works there, the bottle is a shop wine, not a list wine. Choose a pourable American wine that survives a glass program (Washington reds, Oregon whites, a Finger Lakes Riesling, the good producer from your own state), or skip it. Pride that sits in the cellar is still cash.
Phone-check is weaker on names people cannot price from a Napa memory. That is a side benefit, not a license to gouge. Markup manners.
Guests from elsewhere
Hotel F&B: visitors sometimes want "something local" as a souvenir in a glass, whether you are in Sonoma, the Texas Hill Country, Virginia, or Michigan. Give them one good answer by the glass, costed, named, not a flight of seven they will not finish. Locals want the same honesty they want on any other line: sayable, fair, next to food.
Selection still starts from the pass: pair to the menu.
About the author
Marco Azzari
Founder of Wine CFO · Wine List Engineer for restaurants
I help restaurants, hotels and bars earn more from the wine they already sell. I price lists wine by wine, cost by-the-glass programs on their real yield, rebuild selections around the food menu, and rewrite lines so guests understand what they're ordering. Every Wine Profit Checkup goes across my desk personally.
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