Corkage @ Restaurants policy

Dining at a London restaurant in a couple of weeks time and asked what their corkage policy was.

Was sent the following response earlier today:

It is possible to bring a bottle of wine with you, the corkage starts at £35 for a regular bottle of wine or £50 for a sparkling wine, however, can go higher depending on the wine, vintage, and the procedures we have to follow whilst serving the wine.

If you have any bottle that you wish to bring with you, please don’t hesitate to send me the name and vintage and I will pass it to our sommelier team so we can have that checked for you.


I've not come across this before. In my experience of doing corkage at restaurants it's always been a flat rate (some variation on sparkling vs still wines) and that's the end of it. Is this standard practice at some establishments?
 
Dining at a London restaurant in a couple of weeks time and asked what their corkage policy was.

Was sent the following response earlier today:

It is possible to bring a bottle of wine with you, the corkage starts at £35 for a regular bottle of wine or £50 for a sparkling wine, however, can go higher depending on the wine, vintage, and the procedures we have to follow whilst serving the wine.

If you have any bottle that you wish to bring with you, please don’t hesitate to send me the name and vintage and I will pass it to our sommelier team so we can have that checked for you.


I've not come across this before. In my experience of doing corkage at restaurants it's always been a flat rate (some variation on sparkling vs still wines) and that's the end of it. Is this standard practice at some establishments?

just name the restaurant Mark without fear. As customers they can set rules prices and policies, and we choose to patronise or not. Open honesty. nothing for either party to be worried.
 
I’d be interested in their response if you did say Petrus 89 Mark.

It’s a restaurant’s prerogative to allow corkage or not, but I think a pragmatic and reasonable approach should be employed. A Petrus 2015 takes no more preparation than a cantemerle so why should there be a higher corkage charge?

My own personal red line is not taking a wine that’s already on their list - I think that is discourteous. However taking As Sortes when Louro is on the list should be fine.
 
I think there is recognisably a big difference in effort between a screw cap direct pour and an old crumbly cork and tons of sediment and decanting and better glasses etc. Whether you choose to charge for the difference in effort is surely up to the restaurant? Also, you might not want a less experienced person opening a very valuable bottle. So it could be very easily a variable price. If is variable based on how much you can chisel off someone bringing a valuable bottle is less defensible.
 
There was a place in San Francisco that only charged corkage on bottles younger than something like 10 or 15 years old. I thought this was a nice system - although I like Nobelhart’s more.

I’d honestly take that as a sign to go somewhere else. We fetishists are spoiled in London these days, and we should reward the places that treat us properly, imnvho.
 
I wonder if it would simply be down to them having to decant? So if their sommelier thinks it would need decanting they stick a bit on top? Sounds a bit odd, but as others have said, being allowed BYO is a privilege, so you just have to decide whether you are happy or not to go by their rules.
 
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