Getting it right

In the third instalment of our wine series Adam Withrington takes a look at service and storage and the accessories that are there to help you.

The serve and storage of wine in pubs are not only massively important, but are also closely linked. Trying to persuade a consumer to drink the wine you serve in your pub can be a real task. With cask ale it is a given, as it is a product which is simply exclusive to pubs. With lager, if you make the effort, you can deliver a pint in a branded glass, at a cold temperature, that the consumer will enjoy.

That whole experience is harder to replicate in the home.But wine is a different kettle of fish. In both the home and the pub the wine is poured from bottle to glass in the same way. The look and feel of the experience is exactly the same.

So to make the experience in the pub unique you have to work hard at the theatre and quality of serve as well as ensuring quality of product. What is the point of serving poorly-kept wine in a sloppy fashion? At best, the customer can get all that at home, and at worst, the customer knows their wine and has invested in good quality equipment to store and serve it. If you are not making a similar effort, why should they bother coming to your pub to drink your wine?

This is a battle that has to be won if you are to take advantage of wine in your pub. One of the answers is to invest more in kit to help you store and serve wine.

Why not invest more in..​

• Corkscrews​

Having a top quality corkscrew is vital when it comes to putting together a professional wine retailing outfit.

Paul Fenner, owner of The Waiter's Friend Company, which sells a huge variety of wine accessories for professionals, says he set up the company 11 years ago when he felt wine waiters in restaurants were being ill-served by the quality of corkscrews available at the time.

Its flagship Waiter's Friend includes a knife to cut the foil around the cork. "People didn't understand what had been happening in the hospitality environment - we were moving from cork to synthetic corks, which are much harder to pull out of the bottle," he says.

Now Mr Fenner argues that using a top quality corkscrew will help the quality of theatre as well as improve the serve. "With corkscrews you have to make it easy for your staff if they are uncorking 30 to 40 bottles of wine a night. If you get the right kind of corkscrew it will make you look good, which is very important," he says.

Drop-stop​

A drop-stop is simply a very thin circular silver piece of plastic which can be rolled up and placed in the top of a wine bottle to stop the liquid from dripping when poured.

"Inexperienced wine waiters are often worried about dripping the wine while serving it. Why don't you just put a drop-stop in it?" asks Mr Fenner. "They are not expensive and are very easy to use. Just make it look like you care - and the customer will appreciate that."

Ice buckets​

An ice bucket doesn't only have to be the traditional metallic tub. There are now some very good coloured plastic ice buckets on the market which do an equally good job, as Paul Fenner explains.

"We are making ice buckets look a lot nicer. We now have good-looking plastic ice buckets that don't dent like the metal ones. They also stack together well and still do a good job."

The right storage = better tasting wine​

"It never ceases to amaze me that more people don't invest in better wine storage. If your storage isn't good enough it can ruin the taste of a wine overnight," says Mr Fenner.

An open bottle should be kept for no more than one day to ensure optimum quality and freshness. It is also important to seal the bottle once opened, and an air extraction pump or Vacu Vin are good ways to keep wines fresh. Good quality extraction pumps can be bought through companies like Waiter's Friend. Some newer technology has been produced by Corney & Barrow. The Cruvinet system pumps nitrogen into the open bottle and allows you to keep the wine for up to six weeks.

This sounds easy, but one major wine brand owner says it once sent a rep into a high street pub to do some wine training. While setting up he looked behind their bar and found the bottles of white wine had been open all night and were only covered up by small pieces of tin foil. When asked why, the staff said they were told to do it every night so it would save corkage time the next day.

In other words, speed of service had become more important than quality of service. This is not an attitude which will lead to a long-term growth in wine sales.

Pernod Ricard's Perfect Serve​

Here, according to Pernod Ricard, is the way wine should be served each time you open a new bottle - it is simple stuff but how often do you or your staff carry out these tasks every time you open a bottle?

• Use the knife on your Waiter's Friend to cut neatly around the top of the bottle
• Lever the cork gently out of the bottle
• Smell the wine to check that it's fresh
• Check that the glass is clean
• Pour wine into glass.