Top 10 restaurant wine brands: Can you guess 'em?

[Robin Garr]

Wine & Spirits magazine releases the results of its 19th Annual Restaurant Poll today, reporting on the most popular wines in America’s top restaurants for the fourth quarter of 2007. Wine geeks are almost invariably amused by these lists, which tend to show mass-market preferences rather than the choices of more serious wine enthusiasts. The envelope, please ...

1. Sonoma-Cutrer Vineyards
2. Cakebread Cellars
3. Jordan Vineyard & Winery
4. Ferrari-Carano Winery
5. Silver Oak Wine Cellars
6. Caymus Vineyards
7. Rombauer Vineyards
8. Santa Margherita
9. Tuscan Estates of Ruffino
10. Veuve Clicquot

The Wine & Spirits’ April 2008 issue featuring the Poll results should be available on news stands, but apparently not online.

Yeah, but wait a sec. I like Rombauer and Cakebread. Not wines I drink often, but wineries I like. They seem out of place to me on this list.

8. Santa Margherita

Santa Margherita was robbed!

Oh wait, maybe I've got that backwards. . . .

Cheers,

Dave

Way to go, Hoke! You get a percentage cut, right?

Mark Lipton

wow you should come to canada where we don't sell those wines...

And of course it depends on the kind of restaurant, what kind of wine-list, type of menu, what they charge etc.

Here is my take looking at the Grills Edmonton list here and what sells (yes, a connection).

J Lohr Cab Sauv.
Greg Norman Shiraz.
Oyster Bay SB.
Dr Loosen "L" Riesling.
Coppola Claret.
Thorn-Clark Shotfire Ridge Shiraz.
Seghesio Zin.
Bolla Amarone.
Miquel Torres Cab Sauv.
Jaffurs Viognier.

Yes, Bob, but Alberta is hardly Canada anymore, is it??

No tax, too much money, 12 straight Tory election wins, and private wine sales - meaning a large selection. How unCanadian!

(ps my bro lives in Calgary - I'm coming out to visit in June)

I like the Sonoma Cutrer "Le Cutrer" which I first encountered in a restaurant. I also like Caymus and Ferrari-Carano wines and have had some Silver Oak I liked. (And some I didn't.) From Bob Parsons's list I've had about four of the wines. Not sure if I've had the Oyster Bay S.B. but I tend to like New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc.

I like Ferarri-Carano SIena and some of the Ruffinos. Veuve Clicquot leaves me unimpressed. The only Rombauer I've had was a Chardonnay, which wasn't a style I liked. I've read too many notes on Silver Oak to even go close to a bottle.

From Bob's list I've had the Dr L which is just OK and the Greg Norman Shiraz which didn't leave an impression.

I think it fair to say that for the average customer, eventhough spending $38 on a steak, wine name recognition plays an important role. Hence Dr L, Greg Norman, K-J.
Some customers, at these prices, want to find something new/different on the list and will go up-scale. Penfolds, Cliff Lede, Bouchard, Kistler, Petaluma for instance.

the most popular wines in America’s top restaurants .

Wonder what definition of "America's top restaurants" is? The top 10 list sounds a lot like the list at a steakhouse chain like Ruth's Chris or Mortons - big Chards, Merlots, and Cabs heavy on name recognition.

[Jenise]

the most popular wines in America’s top restaurants .

Wonder what definition of "America's top restaurants" is? The top 10 list sounds a lot like the list at a steakhouse chain like Ruth's Chris or Mortons - big Chards, Merlots, and Cabs heavy on name recognition.

Yeah, what I was thinking. Those are the brands (with the exception of Rombauer, but I have been out of the biz loop for a long time) that Bob and I call "Expense Report Wines". They're popular for the same reason that when a non-winesavvy neighbor in Huntington Beach asked my opinion on several wines available from a caterer to serve at her daughter's wedding, she ultimately went against my reccomendation and ordered the more expensive Cakebread chardonnay--"I want people to know how much I spent."

[David M. Bueker]

I seem to recall that a few years ago W&S gave a more detailed description of how they got to the list, and the "top restaurants" are pretty much self selecting by responding to their survey.

Jenise's comment about "expense report wines" is very appropriate. I was in Southern California a couple of years ago & asked to select the wine for a dinner with a number of executives. I picked a reasonably priced Chardonnay and reasonably priced Cabernet that were almost values on the list (and better wine than some of hte more expensive offerings). I was overruled by my boss because the wines did not cost enough. We ended up with two wines that were horribly overoaked and overpriced.

wow you should come to canada where we don't sell those wines...

No, we have Mission Hill, Jackson-Triggs, Baby Duck . . .