I’ll have the Chateau Mxyzptlk, please.
Superman’s arch-nemesis Mister Mxyzptlk, a wine expert from the 5th Dimension
Ever hear someone say you should choose the 2nd cheapest wine on a restaurant wine list? The thinking goes you won't look like a bottom-feeder and it's likely not an insipid throwaway the restaurant is using to upsell more expensive bottles.
I never quite bought into this argument myself because if you're in a good restaurant where someone competent oversees the wine, everything on the list should have some degree of interest regardless of price. And if you're in a brand-dependent chain, nothing is going to save you from getting soaked on mediocre wine anyway.
Still, the myth persists and is nicely exploded in this piece from Star Wine List. If you don't know SWL, it's kind of like a wine-searcher.com for restaurant wine lists, except it's intensely curated to feature only the best lists in the world. Unfortunately, the fascinating (to us) database of prices and availability is behind a paywall, but they have a lot of interesting if fairly highbrow content including wine guides to major cities, downloadable lists etc, kind of like a geeked out version of On Tour here at swigcoach.com.
SWL's focus on high-end sommeliers yields some interesting inside baseball. My favorite bit of sommelier advice here is "always try the wine with the longest name you can't pronounce." I had to read it several times to be sure they weren't just messing with me. But the thinking goes that it's only on the list because the sommelier loves it, since it's otherwise impossible to sell. That makes sense and I can't wait to try out the theory sometime soon. Mr. Mxyzptlk is no doubt smiling from his home in the 5th Dimension as long as you don’t try to say the wine name backward.
