Johnny Lobster wrote:

> I have noticed that many restaurants near my home in Denver are
> raising their wine prices. They are already charging three to four
> times the retail cost of a bottle. When my local French bistro raised
> theor prices so that there were no bottles under $30, I stopped going
> there and let them know why.

How much does the low US dollar have to do with the price increases? The
low dollar could account for as muich as a 30% increase in their cost of
buying the wine to stock. I was in Colorado 5 years ago and was surprised
to find acohol so expensive. I was used to paying $21 for 26 oz. bottles
of liquor in this part of Canada. but in the Denver area they were
charging $26.95 which made it closer to $34 in my Canadian funds. Beer
was about 50% more than year, and when translate to Canadian funds it was
almost double..... and our liquor prices are relatively high.

The last time I ate in one of the local winey restaurants I was shocked
at the prices. It was bad enough that that their food was overpriced.....
$14.95 for a bowl of vegetable soup, but the cheapest wine on the list
was $36. There was a decent selection of wines, but all their own. It is
not like they had a cellar full of vintage wines that they had to collect
and store. They get it from their own winery's stock, and sell them in
the gift shop for $10-20 per bottle.

For some reason, restaurants seem to have the impression that they are
entitled to couge their customers on wine in order to make a profit. When
they intorduced BYO wine in this provinces the restaurants were allowed
to charge corkage. Some of them charged a reasonable amount. One Toronto
restaurant, known for having a good selection on wine, decided that they
would charge $35. Their reasoning was that when people bring their own
wine it deprived them of the opportunity to make a profit on wine sales.
Needless to say, that upon reading that they felt entitled to make $35
off me for all the work involved in bringing a couple glasses and
popping the cork I certainly felt no need to take my business there.

> However, recently a Pasqiuni's pizzaria opened in the neighborhood
> with no bottle over $20 and many around the $11 mark. Shortly after
> this, Swing Thai lowered their wine prices so that decent bottles can
> be had for $14. Then another downtown restaurant started offering
> bottles for half price before 7:00. I hope these are not all
> coincidental, and that they are trying to compete. Just two weeks ago
> I ate in a wine bar-restaurant in San Diego, and they had good
> Australian Shriaz for $7 a bottle.

Wine prices in restaurants around here run from about $18 up, usually
about a 100% markup. The last time I was in Paris we had an excellent
bottle of Pinot Noir in a restaurant for $12, A lot of places had three
course meny meals that included a 1/4 litre of decent wine for under $40.