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10 US restaurants selling their wines to go

 Manresa, Los Gatos, California

Jim Rollston, wine director at Manresa in Los Gatos, California, has opened up his entire wine list for to-go sales, marking the prices down to reflect their retail value. He started selling off some of the most prized wines in the restaurant’s cellar a few weeks ago in order to be able to pay staff salaries.

Over the last few weeks he has been selling “unicorn” wines like Keller G-Max Riesling Troken from the Rheinhessen, Comte Liger-Belair, Coche-Dury and DRC to Manresa regulars with a fine wine habit.

“Our pricing was way below the market price, intentionally, because I wanted people to see that and swoop in, which they did,” Rollston told Eater. Word quickly spread of the wines being offered and within the first week, the restaurant had raised over $40,000 from rare wine sales to wealthy collectors, with one collector splashing out $20,000 on wine.

“We’ll never be able to purchase a lot of those wines again because they’re so rare or so expensive in the open market. We had to balance the current need to generate revenue with the hope that we will reopen, and guard some nice wines for the future,” Rollston said.

Pluckemin Inn, New Jersey

Brian Hider, wine director of Pluckemin Inn in New Jersey, is selling wines from the restaurant’s 6,000-bottle list to go via its online wine shop, Plucky Wines, which saw a 65% rise in year-on-year sales last month.

“And it’s not just everyday wines either; we saw the everyday traffic jump up, but I found new customers buying high-end wines that you wouldn’t think people are buying in this type of a crisis, like Echézeaux,” Hider told Wine Spectator.

While the sales are providing welcome income for the restaurant, Hider is keen to keep the trophy wines on his library list. “But if someone was looking for something that’s on this list, I would see if I would be willing to sell it,” he said.

Vetri Cucina, Philadelphia

Italian restaurant Vetri Cucina in Philadelphia isn’t finding itself held back by Pennsylvania law, which limits off-premise wine sales by restaurants to four bottles per transaction. Last month it started selling wines off its list to go with a 35% discount on all bottles to reflect their retail prices. Thus far it has sold over $20,000 worth of wine despite the four-bottle per-person limit.

“A few customers are spending thousands at a time in separate transactions. We’re hoping this will help us be able to reopen, and also keep staff health insurance and some of the salaries going,” wine director Bobby Domenick told Wine Enthusiast.

Compagnie des Vins Surnaturels, New York

Compagnie des Vins Surnaturels in Manhattan, which has a successful London offshooot in Covent Garden, has started selling its wines to go during the Covid-19 crisis, offering the vast majority of its 1,650 wine list to take away with a 25% discount.

“This is a ray of hope coming through. We have 6,000 bottles of wine in our cellar – rare things that you won’t find at a lot of stores, and we’re discounting it 25% right now so people can take advantage,” Caleb Ganzer, a managing partner of the bar, told Forbes.

CVS is charging $10 for delivery south of 14th Street and $25 elsewhere in Manhattan, Queens and Brooklyn. Customers can order bespoke food and wine packages through the bar’s Instagram page, which are doing particularly well. The two-packs are priced at US$75, the four-packs US$95 and the ‘Supernatural’ six-packs cost US$195.

Empire State South, Atlanta

Steven Grubbs, wine director at Empire State South in Atlanta, has been having to get creative to keep his wine sales within the limits of Georgia law. At first he had to open then re-cork the wines he was selling to go, placing them in sealed bags for his customers.

A law change on 20 March allowing to-go wine sales at restaurants has made life easier for Grubbs, who has started selling “mystery” wine packs at a variety of different price points to help see consumers through the week.

“A person might want to buy all the Dujac I have, but there’s more tragedy there than them buying a six-pack of varied, retail-priced, ready-to-drink wines, some of which they could never find at retail. It still scratches their itch for the special stuff,” Grubbs told Wine Enthusiast.

Barndiva, California

Chappy Cottrell, wine director of Old World wine specialist Barndiva in Healdsburg, is currently selling nearly 600 wines, including DRC, from the restaurant’s cellar on The Virtual Sommelier website, which now doubles as an online wine shop. Cottrell believes the site to be a “game changer” during these unprecedented times.

“It makes it super easy to upload your entire wine list as a PDF, set your discount prices, and make your mark-up of how high you want to go,” Cottrell told Wine Spectator. He is selling the majority of the wines for 20% less than their list price. 

Four Horsemen, New York

Natural wine specialist Four Horsemen in Brooklyn has cut its wine list prices by as much as 50% in order to sell to-go bottles directly to consumers during the crisis. The restaurant’s wine director and co-owner, Justin Chearno, sold several thousand dollars of wine in the first 24 hours of the offer going live.

The restaurant has turned itself into a wine shop for the foreseeable future, and is offering around three-quarters of its wine list for takeaway sales, but some of the restaurant’s rarest and most obscure wines are being kept back.

Chearno asked people to e-mail him for the full list and recommendations. “Right away we were approached by people asking about the rarest wines on the list – Accomasso and Canonica Barolo, older vintage Yvon Metras, very serious and specific things. We sold out of all the Bruyère Houillon in two hours,” Cheamo told Wine Enthusiast.

Maverick Texas Brasserie, Texas

Run by Joshua Thomas, Maverick Texas Brasserie in San Antonio is selling off two-thirds of its wine list in order to stay afloat during the crisis. Many of the wines on the list, including La Closerie Champagne and D’Angerville Burgundy, are imported directly from the wineries, some of which Thomas will be keeping to sell on the restaurant floor once the restaurant reopens.

Barolo Grill, Denver

Ryan Fletter, owner of Barolo Grill in Denver, has been selling wine to-go since last month, and found the first week to be particularly lucrative, with wine accounting for 40% of the restaurant’s to go sales. All the ‘B’ – Barolo, Brunello and Burgundy – initially proved popular. Wine sales have since dropped down to 20% of total sales.

“What we’re noticing in the last couple of weeks is that people are starting to purchase lower-priced items. I’m not sure if the exhaustion of the financials are starting to enter the mindset of the guests now that this is going to go on longer,” Fletter told Wine Spectator. In response, he is flagging up lower-priced wines to go, keeping his offer fresh and focusing on wines in the US$20-25 bracket.

Fausto, New York

Regional Italian spot Fausto in Brookyln, run by winemaking restaurateur Joe Campanale, has started selling its wines to go, as has Campanale’s neighbourhood wine bar LaLou. The scheme is attracting crowds that snake around the block, which isn’t ideal in an age of social distancing.

Among the wines Campanale is selling at his two venues are a Lambrusco and Montepulciano made by his fair hands, alongside wines from small growers like Pierre Yves Colin Morey in Burgundy.

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