I have gotten many non-corkage freebies without a corresponding issue for which they are trying to make up. Maybe less than half the freebies, but not insignificant. Perhaps that’s why we think of it differently.
Bring whatever bottle you feel like bringing. They are literally charging whatever price they want for giving you the “privilege” to drink your wine. Don’t feel compelled to order a drink or wine off their list. Tip is based on service - if I bring a bottle of wine and get bad service - the tip will be appropriate.
Recently a couple of friends of ours went to an overpriced steakhouse in NYC. I called beforehand and asked what their corkage policy was - was told $25 per bottle. Seemed reasonable. Got to the restaurant and was told its now $50/bottle. Place had maybe 5 occupied tables at the most. We said fine - we will take our business elsewhere and started walking out. Manager came running out of the place and said we open as many bottles as we want for free. We all chose not to dine at their establishment due to their sneaky practices.
while these may be reasons you hear and seem reasonable, the fact is that these decisions are rarely - if ever - made on actual numbers, etc. If the restaurant has an ego around their beverage program (which is endemic, from my pov) then #1 will certainly come into the mix. #2 is at best noisy from the data. fact is that corkage fees are very usually in a small range and based on what others are doing in the local market and concept. they huddle around a very small number range while the underlying financial realities and sales trends vary wildly.
the real value and cost of corkage is in the hospitality part of the entire relationship. what type of diners do you want or need? what is your program like? etc., etc., If i were making a one-size-fits-all corkage policy for restaurants it would be something like;
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offer corkage, probably. the probably is that if you think it will engender you to a cohort that will result in more and better business. the default should be no corkage imo - meaning, you start with that idea and work up if you have high confidence that it will result in the right outcomes for your business.
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work hard to ensure that you’re delivering an experience that always results in #1 above. to me, that means fairly specific rules re: number of bottles, etc. again, the cost and value is the experience within the whole. not the individual diner or meal or transaction.
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as for the actual fee, it should feel special AND should result in value to the diner and restaurant. the higher the better, up to a point. but i cannot stress this enough, based on the hard numbers, the decision tree must start with the default of no corkage. the restaurant should ask themselves why they should offer corkage and if it comes down to getting more business, then they have effectively lost the game before they started. if it’s to get certain types of diners in that they believe will result in more and better business (better defined as higher spend, more loyalty, etc). then, and only then, should they keep going and figure out the right policy.
mark’s post above is wildly off the mark and i’ll endeavor to respond to it directly. the tipping angle specifically.
i’d say this is about as perfect as it gets. succinct, clear, and - most important - shows the hospitatlity angle of the restaurant itself.
Plenty of good advice here. My summary is - be polite, be gracious, know the rules, follow them.
My behavior - I pretty much always bring wine to restaurants, unless it’s just not possible (like if I’m traveling). I bring whatever I feel like. My focus is on what I’m in the mood for, what my co-diners like, and what might go with the food. I let the restaurant handle the wine opening unless it’s an older bottle (maybe > 10 or 15 years) and then I open it myself. I inform the server first about this, and open it at the table. I did have an experience once where a restaurant didn’t let me drink a pre-opened bottle. I was sad.
Perhaps the only exception to this is with a large group with many bottles (i.e. a tasting event) in which we open lots of bottles in advance. This kind of event is always arranged in advance anyway, so not a risk.
I tip generously. If it’s an event with more than one bottle, I tip very generously.
There are two kind, on the extremes usually. People that come with a case of 10-20 Euro wines and they actually want to have cheaper experience at the restaurant (especially if they stay for a week for example), these guests usually will not want to pay the fee (they say we stopped at the winery and we have to drink them because we go back to our country etc.) these guests will be pissed off and they will order a glass of wine.
And then you have people that will bring interesting wines, either wines that are willing to drink specifically (anniversary, reminder of a memory from the past etc. ) and the ones that want to drink really expensive wines and they wish to avoid the restaurant mark up (which is understandable at some point, we all have been there). The last category tends to be and the most generous and more pleasant. They understand their obligations towards tipping offering a glass of wine etc. and I can’t remember anyone that came with a beautiful bottle of wine and I actually charged them corkage fee.
One category which is really a pain (really hard work) for a restaurant but it is also a pleasant one to have, is when you have guests that they want to bring their own wine but they want to bring 10 bottles for example; for a theme (a vertical of one producer, or an horizontal on a region). This is a very difficult task, especially if they want them blind. You will have to choose the order of the service and my god, tons of glasses to be washed. In such cases you always charge the corkage fee because you actually have to do a lot of work, sometimes we decant them for hours and check them with them before we serve them. It takes a lot of time.
The wine event dinners are and the only cases where we waive the two bottle per table restriction.
These guests though, are usually repeated guests.
Long story sort is that if someone brings a bottle of wine on an establishment that doesn’t worth ~20Euro corkage fee to be served in Riedel/Zalto Glasses from an experienced sommelier, then you can’t be happy with paying it…
This is exactly how I look at it. I’ll bring a $40-50 bottle usually, pay the $25 fee, and it beats the $125 bottle they are selling. And I make sure I tip a reasonable amount for the alcohol (not 20% retail). Outside of that, I don’t sweat it.
Now with de Negoce…I’ll really save money 
Edit: Only referring to small tables (non events) and I’m in California. It’s rather normal here.
This is pretty straightforward IMHO.
If a restaurant allows corkage, then bring whatever you feel like drinking as long as it isn’t on their list.
That’s it.
But the real question is do you tip as if the de Negoce bottle is a $150, $50 or $15 bottle! 
+1. Let’s derail this and every WB thread into a de Negoce thread.
Pretty much, although I would never bring a $20-25 current wine or something like that, unless the restaurant just has a terrible list. I can usually find at least one interesting wine on all but the most corporate of lists here in Portland. I usually don’t bring current vintage wines…most good restaurants will have those, and usually only bring whites older than 5 years and reds older than 10.
Yah as said before, unless you’re bringing a $40+ bottle, it makes no sense. Just buy it from the store. The more expensive your bottle is the more you will save. But I don’t do it just for the savings, I do it cause I know I like the wine and also because I have a lot of wine!
Hahaha, I was definitely also wondering if bringing a De Negoce wine would be cool…I guess it comes down to what it’s “value” is lol
I appreciate all the feedback here, and it has definitely lowered my reservations about bringing wine that isn’t super expensive or differentiated - with all the aforementioned notes about being polite, respecting the rules, tipping well etc. I had heard and / or read a couple of times that corkage is meant more for “special” bottles, but I think that must have been more geared towards very high end restaurants with crazy wine lists (and even then, I suppose you should do whatever you want within the rules and just be respectful etc). I’m surprised it’s so common, I guess the restaurant figures it’s a feature that a lot of people enjoy or even seek out, and it’s of course an extremely competitive business so hard not to offer things that other restaurants do.
This topic has been discussed hundreds of time on this board, and the consensus is always the same: there is no consensus.
My guess is the only people who say bringing wine to a restaurant where they allow it is immoral are in the restaurant business. Similarly, the only people who think that buying private label wine is immoral are in the wine business!
I know this isn’t “the thing to say,” but Mark is right. Restaurants don’t allow corkage as some kind of gift or economic transfer from them to customers – they do it because they think it makes sense to their business.
If they think they’d make more money restricting or prohibiting BYO, they’d do it. Does anyone really think restaurants, even in healthy economic times, operate on margins that allow them just to throw money away so rich wine geeks can save some money dining out?
Back to the thread generally:
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Yaacov’s 7 points are very nice, and I am sure his heart is in the right place. But I would point out to the OP that his views represent – I don’t want to use the word “extreme” since that sounds critical and I don’t mean to be critical – but let’s just say are the very most conservative view of corkage construed in the way most favorable to the restaurant’s perspective. It’s fine if he or anyone lives that approach, but I didn’t want the OP to think that represented how most people approach it.
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I know that “I never bring a wine on that restaurant’s list” is another thing people say, but I would guess fewer than 1% of the time does anyone actually obtain the restaurant’s current wine list before dining in order to ensure that the bottle is not on their list. That’s a lot of work for you and sometimes for the restaurant, and very rarely would anyone notice, much less care, that you brought Williams Selyem Allen 2013 and that happened to be on their list too. A more realistic comment is that people probably are less likely to bring wines that are highly common on the lists of restaurants like that – you’re not showing up at Morton’s with a bottle of Mondavi Napa Valley cabernet or Rombauer chardonnay, or at an Italian place with a bottle of Santa Margarita pinot grigio.
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I don’t bring wines to restaurants that look like I stopped at Ralph’s on the way there and picked it up in order to save $20, but I don’t know if that’s anything restaurants really care about or just my vanity. Anyway, I doubt most of the time restaurants and servers notice, know or care whether you brought a Rosso di Montalcino or a Brunello di Montalcino or a Brunello Riserva. It depends some on the restaurant, as you go up into the high end of places with somms and strong wine lists.
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If you are having more than one bottle, I do think a nice plan is to buy an interesting but reasonably priced white, and bring a red of your own. Your odds of finding something actually good and not ridiculously priced are way higher with still whites than with reds. An expensive restaurant might still have a petit Chablis, Vouvray, or Mathiasson Vista Linda chardonnay for $50-80 or something. And some restaurants will waive your second corkage if you do that.
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I agree, remember to tip as though you had ordered a bottle, or at least as though you had ordered one of the lower priced wines on their list.
Have fun with it. It’s so much better in so many ways to bring your own wines if you can do it – uses up your overfull inventory, you can drink wines you know you like, you can have ones aged properly, you don’t waste 15 minutes poring through the list while your wife sits there bored, if you have another couple along you can have great wine without stressing about how much you’re putting onto the bill they are going to split with you, etc. etc.
I dunno. Lots of virtue signaling with this topic — always is, always will be.
The way I look at it is this: if the restaurant offers corkage, then the customer can “order” the corkage, if they choose to do so, within whatever parameters the restaurant sets. If the restaurant doesn’t offer corkage the customer shouldn’t complain about it. If the restaurant offers corkage but the customer doesn’t like the terms, then that’s the customer’s problem. If the restaurant doesn’t want people “ordering” the corkage then they shouldn’t offer it. Whether a restaurant offers corkage, or not, is a business decision made by the restaurant; I feel pretty damn confident in saying that restaurants which offer corkage, in the highly competitive restaurant biz, are not doing it “to be nice” or as some “favor” or “out of generosity.”**
**This all applies to a restaurant’s stated corkage policy. If a restaurant deviates from their stated policy for you, I do believe that merits some kind of extra consideration — what, exactly, that extra consideration shall be is a personal decision, and is subject to the details of the particular situation.
[LOL! … now it’s my turn: I see Chris just made the same point while I was typing my post]
The main reason we do it is for collectors, your wine is more fun to drink than would the same wine at the restaurant, because it’s yours. (Not saying you dupe the list)
+1 to all of that well thought out response (and to +1 to Mark). I think there’s a silent majority that concurs with that, and doesn’t need all the virtue signalling & contrived etiquette violations.
Despite all the discussion here, I don’t think bringing wines to restaurants is particularly common. Looking around most restaurants, usually I see zero other people carrying wine in.
It IS common among folks on this board. We are Wine Berserkers after all!
So let’s get each other really comfortable with it ![[cheers.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/0/0ff9bfcdb0964982cd3240b6159868fbdf215b1a.gif "cheers"){kind=small}
so we can more easily overcome the awkwardness of what is actually a bit uncommon.