By the glass @ Rs 250

Drinking wine in restaurants just got cheaper. Anoothi Vishal exults at the new deals.

Sartoria, an Italian restaurant in Delhi’s posh Vasant Vihar market, is a “family” destination. While its cousins, Kylin (also in the neighbourhood) and Ivy, a glamorous, loungers’ favourite, may attract a more “with it” crowd, at Sartoria diners range from a three-year-old slurping up his spaghetti to a senior citizen. Yet, this month, the restaurant is holding an unusual enough activity: The wine dinner (and lunch), till now confined to glitzy star restaurants, usually priced upwards of a couple of thousand rupees, and an activity decidedly not “family”.

Every Wednesday the restaurant serves up its “wine sampler” menu — tasting portions of smoked salmon, cheese, pork chops, tenderloin steak et al but also mushrooms and mash and thin-crust pizza — five courses, all paired with wine. The price: Rs 1,200 per person. Considering that just one bottle of an entry-level wine at a standalone restaurant in Delhi or Mumbai may have set you back by that some months ago, it’s a steal.

The math is simple. Restaurants mark up their wine — and food — usually at three times the cost price; so a bottle of wine that comes for Rs 500 at a vend, say a Sula, costs you Rs 1,500 in a restaurant. A glass of the same (divide the price of the bottle by five) would come anywhere for Rs 300 plus — and others are known to build in even higher margins while pricing at least the cheaper of their wines. But such calculations are increasingly changing.

Post-meltdown, margins have been lowered and as Saurabh Khanijo, Sartoria owner, explains, restaurateurs like him are willing to sell their wine (and sampler packages with food) almost at cost price. It is not just Sartoria, Khanijo’s other restaurants too have similar value-for-money promotions. Wine by the glass at Kylin comes for just Rs 250 for instance, and at Sartoria, on other week nights, it is possible to pick up certain bottles for just Rs 900. “I want to promote my restaurants as serious destinations for wine,” Khanijo reasons, pointing to his own interest in wine, but admits that because of the financial situation, such promos come in handy to move existing stocks that people were not buying. “I would give my right arm for a customer who buys a Rs 10,000 bottle of wine,” says Khanijo.

While no one is letting go of their top-end stuff, mid-level wines that used to earlier sell in the under-Rs 7,500 bracket are being innovatively packaged and competitively priced by way of wine dinners, buffets, by-the-glass offerings and so forth. In fact, drinking wine in Indian restaurants has never been cheaper.

There’s more: At restaurants, it is now possible to buy a bottle of Chianti in the range of Rs 600-650 (down from Rs 900 earlier) at the lower end, to a bottle of Dom Perignon at Rs 12,000 (down from about Rs 16,000 earlier), because, as sommelier Magandeep Singh puts it, “restaurants are letting go of some of their margin, cutting back about 30 per cent or so.” Wine prices, per se, he adds, haven’t come down.

The other reason, says consultant Sudha Kukreja, is that at least 200 new wine companies have entered the market last year. All these have generous promotional budgets and a mandate to “educate” consumers. And restaurateurs are urging them to make full use of these — which means that half the cost of a promotion may be borne by the dealer or at the very least, a couple of bottles provided free to the restaurants, enabling them to pass on the benefit to the consumer.

Not all restaurants admit to this, of course. But next time you see yet another attractively-priced wine dinner (under Rs 2,000 for six-seven courses at Baci and Yum Yum Tree in New Delhi), you can go ahead and make a reservation.

Then, there are places in Mumbai with their own rationale. Both Henry Tham and Bootleggers are offering discounts during “happy hours” — from 7.30 pm-11.00 pm and 5.30 pm-9.00 pm respectively — because they have noticed a trend in the last couple of months that “more people are drinking earlier in the evenings and typically these are not high spenders… so it’s to encourage them,” says a spokesperson. There is a 30 per cent and 50 per cent discount at both these places in these hours.

But customers at hotels like The Sheraton and The Park in New Delhi will be the happiest by far. Both are aggressively pricing their wines: The Park, for instance, has an ongoing wine buffet where you can order three glasses for just Rs 600. (South Australian Merlots, Pinot Noir from New Zealand, Sangiovese Di Toscana from Italy, a French Rose, wine from Alsace amongst several others). “Basically, it’s progressive action for creating a palate for wine with food. That’s why we have this offer in the coffee shop and not at Aqua or Agni (speciality restaurants)”, says a spokesperson.

At the Sheraton, while the luxury menu from its south-Indian restaurant, Dakshin, continues pairing the best of wine with food at Rs 5,000 per head, elsewhere prices have come down. A glass of wine can now come for as little as Rs 250 (for entry-level wines), unthinkable even six months ago. “We’ve become more aggressive, pressurising our dealers as well,” says F&B manager Rishi Rao Singh, agreeing that these tactics are necessary in a recession-hit market.

If you are looking at drinking the more exclusive premier crus Chablis, for instance, but just one glass of it, the hotel will open the bottle for you, says Singh. “Earlier, there were many expensive wines in the Rs 5,000-7,000 bracket that we didn’t serve by the glass, but now if a customer asks for just two glasses from a bottle, we open it for them,” says Singh. The rest of the bottle becomes a focus for hardsell in the next couple of days.

The JW Marriott, on the other hand, has a private cellar sale that’s currently on to give guests “a rare chance… to fill their own cellar with carefully crafted wines.” You can find full-bodied Bordeaux, new world Cabernet Sauvignons and Australian sparkling Shiraz in the collection, through this week. Most are priced between Rs 2,000-10,000 though there is a “elite” selection for under Rs 39,000 a bottle too.

With retail activity down, restaurants in malls bear a double burden. But that just means they are trying harder. Rohit Aggarwal, director, Lite Bite Foods, that owns FresCo, a casual-diner at a Gurgaon mall, acknowledges the challenge and says the restaurant is striving to “make wine exciting but affordable”. Their old list has been revamped and a condensed newer one prices all bottles at Rs 1,600 (originally up to Rs 5,000) and wine by the glass at Rs 250. If that isn’t a reason to drink up, what is?