One Block West Restaurant--Winchester, Virginia

One Block West

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Virginia Wines with Chef Ed

Mike Potashnik, publisher of the Virginia Wine Guide, a publication of the Virginia Wine & Food Society of which One Block West is a corporate member, interviewed me recently for background information for a wine column that he writes in Restaurant Digest. I thought some of the information, albeit ostensibly for the restaurant trade, would be of interest to our customers. Here is the text of the interview.

Mike: What percentage of total wine sales would you say are of VA wines?

Ed: Virginia wines represent just slightly more than a third of my list and in an average week represent just about a third of the wine sales.

Mike: What are your customers’ attitudes towards VA wines?

Ed: Customer attitudes span a wide spectrum. We see it all from “if it’s from Virginia, it must be bad,” to new wine drinkers who have just had their first wine experience of any kind at one of the Virginia wine festivals and are eager to taste more Virginia wines. Most of my customers are very open to a suggestion of a Virginia wine and are very pleasantly surprised when they taste. Still, we do have locals with the attitude that if it is from around here, it cannot be as good as something imported—these are the same people who would rather have frozen Chilean Sea Bass from another hemisphere than the perfect Striped Bass caught 150 miles from here and delivered fresh overnight.

Mike: Do you need to sell them, or because you are in VA, are customers more inclined to order them?

Ed: A bit of each. Tourists represent about 40 percent of our business and many of them come here specifically because of our reputation for having such a deep Virginia list. It is especially gratifying when we get Californians from wine country who take advantage of our huge by-the-glass program to sample a wide spectrum of Virginia wines. Their experiences are invariably positive. On the other hand, we have customers who are predisposed not to order Virginia wines and whose arms we have to twist. But our servers are equipped to do just that. We are all wine drinkers, we taste wines constantly, and we visit local wineries as a group. Each server has a go-to list of sure-fire wines including favorite Virginia wines. If a customer will let us sell a Virginia wine, we will. Anecdotally, late one evening, a Frenchman and his wife came in and requested our best bottle of Champagne. He was willing to let me upsell him from our best bottle of Champagne to our best sparkling wine, Kluge Brut from Albemarle County, and he was blown away.

Mike: Which kinds of wines sell best and why?

Ed: I don’t imagine this answer will surprise anyone. Single varietal wines at the $30 price point (the median price) sell best. My customers largely expect that wines are single varietals and not blends. Selling a Bordeaux blend or “meritage” is akin to pushing a big rock up a hill, but this is true of all wine and not specific to Virginia wines. Of Virginia white wines, we move a lot of two local wineries’ Chardonnay. In fact, our overall best selling wine is a local Chardonnay, made in the Burgundian style. Chardonnay sells best because customers are conditioned to ask for it in preference to anything else. Our biggest selling Virginia red is a beautiful local Chambourcin. Chambourcin is definitely a hand sell as very few people have ever heard of it, but it shows great promise in Virginia. The Chambourcin sells so well because we love it and we sell it hard. I would be less than honest if I didn’t say that Chilean Cab, California Merlot, and Australian Shiraz sales dwarf the sales of Virginia reds.

Mike: Are VA wines competitively priced on your wine menu?

Ed: There are examples of competitively priced wines on the list, but the bread and butter Chardonnays, Merlots, and Cabernets are priced about 20 percent higher than wines from elsewhere. This is probably still a function of economies of scale, but price is likely the single biggest factor hindering the explosion of Virginia wines. And to be frank, Virginia wines probably have to underprice the market to buy market share. It is a rare customer who will buy the excellent Barboursville Nebbiolo Reserve in preference to a similarly priced Carema or a much more expensive Barolo.

Mike: How do you organize your wine menu? Does that help sell them?

Ed: As a chef, my mind works in flavors and so I organize my wine list so that it should be relatively easy to pick a wine to match your meal. We have categories such as Light, Fruity Whites; Crisp Whites; and Fruit-Forward Reds. Customer feedback on this organization has been positive and several other restaurateurs have asked to copy my organization. I believe that this organization helps people quickly narrow their focus to one section of the list and then the server has a manageable number of wines to describe. The downside of this approach is that for example, I have Pinot Noirs scattered across three different sections, so it is hard for a customer to see the depth of Pinot Noirs. Still, I believe that the categories are much more natural and less intimidating for customers and thus promote more sales. Another big sales tool is the menu itself. Each entrée has a recommended wine pairing and you can bet that the wine suggestion is a Virginia wine! Customers often order the recommended wine.

Mike: Finally, how important are wine dinners like the one you are having with Rappahannock Cellars and other wineries in terms of your VA wine program?

Ed: I am trying to build one of the best small (around 100 wines) programs anywhere and the wine dinners are key. They help establish and reinforce our reputation as a premier Virginia wine destination and they help the wineries market their wines. And, they give me a chance to do dishes that would not sell on the dinner menu, which deserve to be tasted. More importantly, they give our servers great exposure to the wines and the winemakers and that helps equip them to better sell Virginia wines. These dinners also help educate our customers and an educated customer is a great customer. Coming out of each of these dinners is a group of people who will then tell their friends about the great quality of Virginia wines.

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