Restaurants

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'When I was choosing house wine, it was a question of finding something with a bit of oak, and some semblance of fruit,' admits Nick Tarayan, who used to buy wine for a London restaurant and now runs Wine of the Times, which supplies wines to restaurants. 'And it was important to make sure it didn't give people heartburn.' As well as house wine, many bottles priced at a lower level should be avoided. A bottle of 2004 d'Arenberg the Hermit Crab marsanne/viognier from Australia costs £25 at Hakkasan - but £7.99 at Oddbins. At the Ivy , 2000 Marqués de Riscal Rioja Reserva is £31. Compare this with £9.99 at Majestic. Both wines are marked up more than three times the retail price. Pizza restaurant Rocket in Mayfair commendably adds £10 to the price of every wine, but it's a freak operation. In fact, every pizza restaurant should be able to offer good-value wines in this fashion because of the relatively low production cost of pizza and pasta dishes - but they don't. Usually, cash sums (rather than percentages) are only lumped on at a certain price point, around £60-£100 per bottle - out of reach of most pizzerias.

Matt Skinner, sommelier and wine buyer at Fifteen , was shocked by the mark-ups when he first arrived in London from Australia. He thinks adding a cash margin above a ceiling of £50 is the right approach. 'As a restaurant you might take less of a percentage profit,' he says, 'but you'd ultimately make more money, because people would buy your more expensive bottles. The way it is now, people just stick with the safe option. Wine is such an intimidating subject and people are already concerned with how much they're spending, so what they drink is the first to suffer.'

Expensive wines don't necessarily equate to excellent value, however. According to Fine Wine magazine's Beckett, 'Some people will have wines just so people can say, Oh, it's the most fantastic wine list - it's got 1900 Margaux. The sommelier doesn't really want to sell the wine, so gives it the most ridiculously high price; then, if someone is stupid enough to buy it, they make a vast profit.' A good example of this is a 1870 Château Lafite costing £11,750 at the Greenhouse. More forgivable are those places that mark-up certain wines absurdly, while also providing bottles that are within the reach of most people. Gordon Ramsay in Chelsea is one such, offering premium-priced top Bordeaux with plenty of age, but also drinkable wines from the south of France at under £20.

Why are costs so high?
Choose carefully
Wine lists that shine
Good-value picks