How Italian Wine Bars Just Get It Right

If more places used the Italian enoteca model, the wine world would be a better, more inclusive place

Image courtesy of author. My favourite enoteca in Rome

Is the above a picture of a wine shop or a wine bar?

Well, it has shelves and people just out of shot are browsing and buying bottles to take away. It must be a shop.

Yet there are tables and chairs. Behind you, a steady stream of people are buying glasses or bottles and spilling out onto the street. So, a bar then.

Wait, there’s a bit of food too. A cheese plate. Olives. Marinated vegetables. Is this a restaurant? Can you reserve a table and eat here?

This, my friends, is an Italian enoteca, an hybrid wine store and bar, often with a few snacks slung from a tiny kitchen. Enotecas are places where you can buy a bottle to take home and / or sit at a table to drink a glass (or bottle) and take a snack.

I snapped this particular picture during a visit to Rome last week but you see enotecas everywhere in Italy — I must have visited over 100 of them during my wine career.

I love them because they are the best, cheapest, and most inclusive way to buy and enjoy wine. I love them so much that I used them as the blueprint for my own hybrid wine store and bar in the UK.

But in places like the UK — and the US — wine is considered a rigid, often formal thing. All suits and “would sir like to taste the wine” and swirling and sniffing. It’s for the elite, not the everyday.

But Italian enotecas don’t think so. And they’re right.

You want value? You got it

One of my goals as a Sommelier-turned-writer is to expose parts of the wine trade that never sat well with me. That includes the difference in wine pricing between bars and retail stores.

The bottom line is that wine stores work to small margins whereas bars work to large ones. For reference, my enoteca marked up wines to take home at around 55% of the wholesale price. Local bars and restaurants however marked up around 400%. And that isn’t unusual.

The Italian enoteca however blows this model out of the water. Because they are both a shop and a bar, pricing has to be transparent. Clients can see how much a wine is to take home, it’s right there on the shelf. You’re going to have a hard time persuading them to pay typical wine bar markups.

Believe me.

So enotecas usually charge a flat corkage fee on their wines to drink in. In Italy, I find corkage fees usually range from $3 to $7. My enoteca charged more at around $12 but it was still the best value place to drink wine in town.

If you only take one point away from this article, let it be this one. The flat fee corkage model makes the enoteca the best value way to drink wine, short of drinking it at home.

Yet my customers struggled with the concept. They were confused by the double pricing. Why couldn’t they drink their bottle at retail price? Were we trying to rip them off?

I get it. It’s not easy to understand the enoteca model because the wine trade isn’t exactly known for its transparency.

But once you understand them — and the straight-up value they provide — I’d bet my last bottle of Burgundy that you won’t want to drink anywhere else.

It’s also not just about saving money. It’s that enotecas act rather differently to a typical wine bar.

In my opinion, a better way.

Wine bars aren’t always about wine (but they should be)

In enotecas, wine comes first. Everything else is considered a distraction.

For a start, you can’t move for wine. Shelves heave with bottles. My own enoteca stocked over 350 wines which amounted to thousands of bottles stacked on shelves seven feet high.

Unlike in a traditional wine bar where the only bottle you might see is the one in front of you, enotecas force you to look at the bottles. Be distracted by them. Hopefully, ask questions about them.

Image courtesy of author. Another excellent Roman enoteca

If there is food, it’s often there to compliment the wine, not the other way around. My enoteca served small plates specifically designed to not interfere with the wine both in flavour and presentation.

Even the service contributes to this idea. Traditional wine service can be fussy and formal whereas enoteca service tends to be direct and uncomplicated.

For my part, that meant things like ripping the foil off tableside. Plunging the corkscrew through wax tops rather than carefully chipping it off (FYI, it works better that way). It meant glugging out generous pours. It meant using ugly wine chillers that actually work rather than useless double-walled coolers or fussy white napkins and ice buckets.

Because enotecas strip away all the formality that often follows wine culture around like a bad fermentation smell, it’s all about the wine. Nothing else.

You’d be forgiven for thinking well duh, aren’t wine bars always about the wine?

You’d be surprised about how often they’re not.

I’ve noticed a big trend among modern wine bars to focus on almost everything but the wine. Their Instagram feeds focus on the decor. The vibe. The customers. Bottle shots? Not so much.

Honestly, I understand why.

In the age of our Lord social media, atmosphere and vibe are incredibly important. Research shows people are prepared to spend more in an Instagrammable joint.

So unless your customer demographic is exclusively made up of wine geeks, a beautifully situated corner table will probably do more for your Friday night numbers than a bottle shot of a sought-after wine.

I understand that. But frankly, I do believe wine should be the focus of a wine bar. Call me old-fashioned. Call me a geek. Or call me someone who cares about wine — and the culture of it — enough to make it centre stage.

Enotecas make wine centre stage. And for that, I love them.

Some local bar owners were surprised I chose an enoteca model for my place. They would brag about their margins. They didn’t understand why I would choose to make less money by using a corkage model.

But you don’t run an enoteca for the love of money. You run it for the love of wine.

You also run it because you care about price quality ratio. Because you believe wine shouldn’t be pompous and intimidating but joyous and fun.

I no longer run my enoteca but I do visit others. Frequently.

I do that not just because I know they’re the best value way to drink wine. But because I know the owner will care enough about wine to put themselves through the issues that come with enoteca life.

I thought about this as I stood in my favourite Roman enoteca last week. My glass of wine was perched on a shelf groaning under the weight of the bottles. I watched people of all ages enjoy themselves. I saw the political posters on the wall. I thought about how this bar stands for something — more than just making money by selling substandard wine.

And I thought about my own enoteca. The one that, despite all the issues that came with pushing an Italian wine culture peg into a British-shaped hole, I wouldn’t have done it any other way.

Thankfully, enotecas are becoming more and more popular around the world. If you’re lucky to have one close to you, may I suggest you use it.

Because wine becomes so much more fun when you strip away the formality and start enjoying it enoteca-style.

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