Half full or half empty?

The two things about South African restaurants that I have always found most striking when returning home from an indulgent trip abroad are prices and wine service.

For all the inflation of recent times, value for money in most of our top restaurants is still absurdly good: wine service, often, is simply absurd. Why is this so in a country that is among the world’s 10 top and best-known producers of wine?

Three factors are probably to blame. First, we live in times when it’s seen as cool to be casual, geeky to have knowledge and unforgivable to flaunt it. Hopefully that fashion will pass. Harder to overcome is a deeply ingrained local beer culture. Not long ago, a survey found that only 7% of South Africans prefer wine.

Serving beer involves being sober and not spilling. That’s a fair start, but serving wine is a little more challenging, involving both skills and knowledge.

The third factor, then, is training. In terms of wine service, few restaurants seem to do much. Some sponsor staff to the Cape Wine Academy’s introductory course, but many are reluctant to do more, partly due to the dizzying rate of waiter turnover (another notable difference between our restaurants and Europe’s) but mostly because their main agenda is to employ waiters with strong pouring arms. A stand-out exception to this has long been Pretoria’s La Madeleine where all waiters seem rigorously trained and proud of it.

There are two roads to improvement. Employing trained sommeliers is one way to cascade a wine culture down a restaurant’s ranks and it usually pays off by attracting a quality-driven clientele that’s prepared to pay more.

This practice is still in its dawn but, encouragingly, enthusiastic young sommeliers from diverse backgrounds are making their mark across the country. And not only in the cities but also places like Hermanus, Knysna, Magaliesberg, the KwaZulu Natal highlands and, of course, Mpumalanga’s most exclusive lodges.

Acquiring wine knowledge takes time and requires if not passion then at least curiosity. The bottom-up approach is to ensure that all who handle wine have the necessary serving skills. There’s still much work to be done – and I don’t speak as one who expects to see the snobby stuff like a bowtie and tastevin – though I would like to hear correct pronunciation, particularly of the vowels and silent consonants in Chenin Blanc and Sémillon. "Blonk" sounds too much like "plonk".

Wine service starts before guests arrive. In countless restaurants, waiters have taken my order and returned to tell me my choice isn’t available.

Few waiters know beforehand, so clearly few managers communicate the day’s out-of-stock items, let alone bother to print stickers or a fresh list.

As this article focuses on the waiter, I’ll skip aspects of wine service (range, storage, pricing, quality of glassware, corkage policy) that are the domain of management and go straight to the overtures made when diners arrive.

A cardinal sin nowadays is to assume that the dominant male gets the winelist. Even if caveman is the host, he may want to leave this choice to a more evolved guest.

A simple question can avoid so much dangerous territory. When should the wine order be taken? About 95% of the time I’m asked for my wine order before food – and I explain why I first choose food. Granted the waiter cannot guess which guests are aficionados and which are guzzlers. Again, a question would convey more professionalism than an assumption.

The wine-list’s size also determines how long to let the guest read it. In tough economic times, daunting cellars are giving way to pragmatic lists (two of the most intelligently compiled in recent times, supported by good staff knowledge, are at Bon Appétit in Simonstown and Soulsa in Melville). When I’m invited to choose in the cellar, I expect to be taken there by a competent waiter: it’s not good enough to point out which are reds and whites (at Bellgables, with smiles) nor to see a queue building up outside and try to usher me out (at Casalinga, with anxiety).

Snobbish ritual

Pricing is a part of life and I expect neither deceit nor embarrassment. Having my guests with me in the cellar was no reason for the sommelier (just voted the country’s best) at Zachary’s last October not to tell me that his recommendation (which I accepted) was double the cost of the bottle I’d first chosen. That was misplaced tact.Cape Town restaurant Belthazar’s 2007 fiasco (involving a Meerlust 1982 magnum and visiting London restaurateur Albert Roux) was deliberately extortionist and rightly resulted in an apology, a credit and a waiter’s dismissal.

Most of what is seen as snobbish ritual centres on when the wine arrives at table, but most of it is just common sense. Proffering the bottle unopened, label up, is the right time for guests to notice mistakes in vintage or name (Waterkloof and Waterford are easily mistaken by a novice) before a bottle is opened.

It also lets the host touch. I’ve sent back countless tepid whites and at a Cattle Baron branch on a hot summer’s night, my Alto Rouge arrived as the temperature of a midday car boot, not the room, let alone an air-conditioned cellar (worse still, the bill totted up two bottles, but the waitress didn’t check that either).  

Standing to the host’s right (restaurant terrain permitting) is no secret Masonic code either: it’s the side of the glassware, so easier for pouring and communicating.

Showing the label has a corollary: in these days of ordering fine (as distinct from house) wines by the glass, proffering the bottle is a mandatory show of transparency. Bringing a filled glass to the table is a cardinal sin, yet when I slammed a (now closed) restaurant for this in a review, three restaurateurs wrote to ask why this was wrong.

Experts differ in the need to offer a cork for smelling, because wholesome corks can conceal musty wines below. I don’t sniff but simply look to check for improper storage (dryness) or degradation (leakage). A trick question is whether waiters should pour the host a taste of wine from a screw-cap bottle. The answer is yes, though I wonder how many waiters know why. Clearly it can’t be corked, but it can be oxidised due to seal damage from careless stacking of cases. When pouring, it’s downright lazy to top up the tasting host first (very common). Pardon my chivalry but it will always be right to start with female guests.

At restaurants with tiny tables, few waiters ever offer a bucket stand unless I ask. Avoiding clutter is a basic consideration. So is table setting: at 141 in Greenside, Johannesburg, our pre-starter glasses were filled and plonked dead centre on the place mats. Waiters should always have an eye for clean glassware. At Fu.Shi in Plettenberg Bay, I had to stop a waiter pouring into a glass that contained a dried leaf from the table flowers.

But kudos to the sharp-eyed lass at Nonna Mia (Bedfordview, Johannesburg) who saw from across the room a kamikaze fly nose dive into my Frascati, and immediately arrived with a clean glass and a good-humoured apology that the fly wasn’t in my soup!

By far the most widespread fault is over-filling. The most inept case is when pouring the first bottle to a table of six and running out of wine at the fourth glass. No large glass should ever be filled more than one-third or small glass more than half-way. Doing so shows that the waiter (a) knows nought about swirling to enhance the wine and (b) is under instructions to sell more bottles.

Hence the practice of non-stop top-up which can become so irritatingly intrusive that some hosts eventually take over control of their bottles.

Wine knowledge is necessary and conventions must be learned, but a lot of wine service comes down to common sense (look, ask and listen!) and a caring, hospitable attitude, neither cowing to the wine snob and never ever acting superior to a novice diner.

Restaurants that conduct wine training will find enough success in this competitive advantage - without needing to fill glasses to the very top.