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Wine markups typically pay for the linens on the table, as well as staff training, wine storage (cellars can cost tens of thousands to construct, not to mention the cost of the real estate they occupy and the capital their pricey contents tie up), higher-than-average food and labour costs (wine prices often subsidize better restaurants' menus) and pricey items many diners take for granted, like crystal stemware and decanters. Generally speaking, the fancier a restaurant and the better its service, the more the wine should cost, he said.

Though it's tempting for customers with a little knowledge to try and calculate a reasonable wine price, it isn't always straightforward, said John Szabo, a Toronto-based master sommelier and wine consultant who has built lists in Toronto and Ottawa. I will not reward you for being thrifty at Joe Beef," he said. "On the low end, if the customer is drinking $35 wine I might even go to three times the retail price, or 3.2 times. But watch out if you don't have that kind of budget.

Joe Beef's higher-end bottles often see less than a 100-per-cent markup. And at Montreal's Joe Beef, one of Canada's best restaurants, co-owner David McMillan makes no bones about how he prices his list to encourage spending. A $105 wine from Priorat, one of Spain's most interesting red wine regions, cost $350 – nearly 31/2 times its retail price.Īt CinCin, a well-known Italian spot on Vancouver's Robson Street, a bottle of Blue Mountain's beloved reserve chardonnay, which retails for $26, will cost you $79. At Patria, a lushly designed and terrific Spanish restaurant on Toronto's prime King Street West strip, my go-to Spanish white, which costs $15 in the provincial liquor store, was marked up more than three times retail to $52 recently. In Calgary, Montreal and Toronto, many restaurateurs price their wines at more than three times cost, and it's getting hard to find a decent glass for less than $12. It's in-your-face enough to make some diners want to stick with Diet Coke. That's been happening to me a lot lately where many Canadian restaurateurs are loath to price their chefs' cooking at levels that would make it profitable, they show no such restraint with wine prices. There is perhaps nothing more galling than flipping open a restaurant's wine list to find a $15 bottle that you know and love listed for more than $50.