Gourmet Live Blog

From a sommelier’s perspective, the magic formula for great restaurants’ wines by the glass seems to be a delicate dance between price and quality, accessibility and adventurousness, and, of course, availability on a scale to meet the demand. One sommelier firmly on the side of adventure by the glass is Jonathan Baird of Hatfield’s in Los Angeles, who may also possess one of the highest joie-de-job quotients around.

“I really love the ability to curate what I consider to be a fun by-the-glass program,” Baird tells us. ”I frequently and intentionally go out on limbs to challenge our guests when they choose to order wines by the glass. I do not like to put many well-known varietals and wine regions on this page. I use it as a tool to get our guests out of their wine-knowledge comfort zones and pour them something that is familiar to their taste buds but completely–and literally–foreign to what they expect.

“The wine world is enormous, and the by-the-glass program allows me to find really great values in really obscure varietals and areas. I love the “This is absolutely spectacular, thank you!” look on a guest’s face when I pour something they’ve never heard of from a place they didn’t know made wine. I’m not trying to force wine education on anyone, I just like to remind people that they should have fun with wine and not be intimidated by it. I have 22 wines open by the glass, and I’m very confident that I can pour something that will make anyone happy.”

Discover the Beaujolais that made Hatfield himself shout for joy–and much more wine lore–in this week’s In Vino Veritas issue.

This week’s story “Sommeliers’ Top Wines by the Glass” yielded not only 28 hand-picked red and white favorites for fall (plus a bonus bubbly) but also expert insights into what somms tend to look for in “glass pours.” The criteria tended to fall into the four A’s:

• Affordability, which is why these wines are often great buys at retail. The two bottles Le Bernardin sommelier Aldo Sohm recommends are under $30.
• Availability: Wines by the glass sell speedily and in quantity, so though boutique bottlings may be tempting, will the supply last? At Noma, for example, “some of the challenges with our pouring wines are getting enough of it,” sommelier Mads Kleppe explains. “Most of the producers we work with are very small-scale producers, so we always fight to get enough bottles.”
• And–depending on the sommelier and the restaurant–the selections may emphasize accessibility (“They should be straightforward and easy to understand,” notes Twist by Pierre Gagnaire’s Will Costello)…
• …or adventure (“More unusual wines give people a chance to try something new,” says Dabbous’ Charles Pashby-Taylor).

What do you look for when ordering wine by the glass?