Ask for a taste – more restaurants and now willing to pour a sample of wines by the glass but not by the bottle!
Do the math – most wines are marked up twice the retail price to pay for service and stemware, but some restaurants get away with a much higher markup. It’s always best to familiarize yourself with the retail prices of some of your favorite wines so that you know how fair the pricing is.
By the glass, bottle or a quartino’s worth – More restaurants are offering wine in this format. Although it sounds like a quarter, a quartino is actually a third of a bottle. These yield two four-ounce glasses. The rule of thumb is five glasses per bottle (a standard bottle has 750ml or 25.4 oz.) but most wine glasses hold a 4 to 6 ounce serving.
Drink wine with the food from the region – Wine is made to go with the food from the region. As a general rule, southern Italian wines will go well with Southern Italian food. But this rule only works well in places that have hundreds of years of practice at developing their cuisines and wines, i.e. Europe.
Find your personal style – more and more wine lists are being organized by the characteristics of the wine (“unoaked, aromatic whites” or “rich, powerful, reds”) instead of country of origin. This can be very user friendly if you know what type of wine you’re looking for. One way to learn about these styles and what they mean is to read the user-friendly Wine Style: Using Your Senses To Explore And Enjoy Wine(Includes Pull-Out Wine Wheel)
by Mary Ewing-Mulligan and Ed McCarthy, the people who brought you Wine For Dummies (For Dummies (Cooking))
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