As the COVID-19 pandemic began to wind down over the last year, I noticed a sad trend in some upscale restaurants: Wine list prices seemed to be rising.
I don’t mean only at Michelin-starred places. I refer also to simple, quality cafes that once priced their wines at about three times wholesale, or twice retail. That’s plenty. Restaurants usually pay less for wine than do retail wine stores, and careful restaurant wine buyers can make a decent profit with normal markups.
