Restaurants

James Aufenast investigates the murky world of mark-ups.
London is one of the most expensive places in the world to drink wine. Paris has a wealth of brasseries that list well-priced, mid-range Bordeaux, Burgundy and Rhône wines; Spain and Italy are even cheaper; and Australia is better priced still. But in the UK's capital, on average, a bottle of wine in a restaurant will cost nearly three times as much as it would in a shop - often more, in fact. Some wines cost over six times as much when you're dining out. Would you spend £36 on a bottle of Jacob's Creek merlot? Feature continues

'There's some rapacious pricing in London,' says Neil Beckett, editor of Fine Wine magazine. 'I don't eat out that much precisely because of what a decent bottle costs. It's a shame, because there are some great places, but you just end up paying through the nose. Mostly, I stay at home and inflict a burnt sausage on people.'

For example, a 2001 Côtes du Rhône from Guigal costs £8.49 from Oddbins. Drink it in a restaurant and you'll pay £30 - over three times the Oddbins' price. That's what this very basic, more or less mass-produced bottle from a large producer in the south-east of France costs at the Ritz on Piccadilly. The Ritz, however, isn't alone in imposing such steep mark-ups.

Other fine dining restaurants, such as Gordon Ramsay's Angela Hartnett at The Connaught and the Greenhouse in Mayfair , the Capital in Knightsbridge and Tom Aikens in South Kensington, mark up way beyond what is reasonable. Corinne Michot, head sommelier at Angela Hartnett, explains her average mark-up of nearly three and a half: 'If I list a wine under £100 our guests think there's something wrong with it. If it's not expensive enough, it's not going to be any good, is their attitude. As it happens, my prices are no worse than other restaurants in Mayfair.'

Nigel Platts-Martin's group of restaurants - some of the most acclaimed in London, including the Square in Mayfair, Chez Bruce in Wandsworth, La Trompette in Chiswick and the Glasshouse in Kew - used to have a reputation for quite low mark-ups, but that's no longer the case. Dawn Davies, head sommelier at Platts-Martin's latest venture, French restaurant the Ledbury in Notting Hill, says her mark-ups are justified - including one by a factor of four on a South African red wine, Flagstone's 2003 Cellarhand Backchat, priced at £19.50. 'I start by multiplying wine in the middle of the list by three and go up or down from there. That's normal for London, it's what you need to make a profit,' she says. 'Yes, I multiply some [wines] by four, but the 1982 Château Latour isn't even multiplied by one. You can't buy it from a wholesaler for that money.' However, few of us would want to splash out £650 on Latour just to experience its low mark-up. Usually, regional France offers a good refuge for people who can't afford expensive Bordeaux or Burgundy, but Pacherence du Vic-Bilh Sec, by Domaine Berthoumieu, in south-west France, costs three times the wholesale price at the Ledbury.

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