I always like to quote the Chef de Cave from Dom Pérignon who said, "You buy a bottle of malbec for $5 and you pour it into this big, beautiful glass and I made you a bottle of chardonnay and pinot noir and I aged it for ten to twenty years and you're going to stuff it into this flute where you can't smell it, you can't really see it, you can't aerate it -- why are you doing that to my wine?" It's like, why you doing that to my Bentley? You're not letting it out of the showroom.

Myth: The cheaper the bottle, the better the value

In 99.99% of restaurants, the most marked-up wines are at the bottom end of the list and the least marked-up wines at the top end. So, if you're looking for a bargain, it’s usually the most expensive bottle.

We like to say that we put together a wine list that's great for treasure hunters -- you know, those people who collect a lot of wine, they know a lot, and they're going through a list to try to find where the deal is that no one else will find. When we have a super crazy expensive wine that we got at auction or something like that, sometimes we only tack on $50. We want somebody to drink it! We bought it because we think it's delicious and it works with our cuisine. I don't want that bottle to sit in our cellar until I'm dead and gone.