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Where should a bottle of wine be opened?

Cathy Gowdie

Trend: Wine doesn't necessarily need to be opened at the table.
Trend: Wine doesn't necessarily need to be opened at the table. Simon O'Dwyer

My husband and I were on a rare date night without our kids and decided to splash out on an expensive wine. We were surprised when our waiter, after showing us the bottle, took it away to the bar to open it. Since when has been OK to open a bottle away from the table?

Readers whose careers in dining out predate the 21st century may recall with nostalgia – or dismay – the once-common tableside spectacle featuring an awkward silence and a waiter locked in battle with a recalcitrant cork. It has been a good few years since I witnessed a waiter gripping a bottle between his thighs, wordlessly wrestling a corkscrew and wearing a grimace suggestive of a Scientology-style silent birth.

This can reasonably be attributed to the rise of screwcapped wines and more professional waitstaff but, like you, I have also noticed waiters often step away from the table to open a bottle with a cork, and this happens in some of the priciest places in Australia.

My copy of The Oxford Companion to Wine states that after the bottle has been presented to the person who ordered it, it "should be opened in view of the host". Since my edition dates almost to the Gutenberg era I have sought the advice of a more up-to-date authority: David Lawler, the president of Sommeliers Australia.

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Lawler is the head of the Rockpool Group's Melbourne wine program and his view is that where possible, "all bottles should be opened within the line of sight of the customer if they wish to observe". However, he says that in recent years there has been a change – a positive one, he believes – in the way wine is handled by staff and viewed by guests. In some cases, he says "to step away from the table is a little less intrusive than making a show out of something the guest may not want to watch".

Lawler thinks an increase in "verification tastings" by trained sommeliers may have driven this shift. "I first started verifying wine – tasting it on behalf of guests – in the late '90s. This was because I felt terrible that some guests had not recognised faulty wines, resulting in an unpleasant experience for them."

Not everyone likes to watch their sommelier sample their wine. "This was initially met with some resistance as guests were not familiar with the tradition, some thought I was just drinking their wine."

Rockpool restaurants are designed with dedicated stations visible to all customers where wine is opened, assessed and decanted. However, in any restaurant, Lawler stresses that diners should always be able to see what is happening with their bottle, even if it is not opened at the table.

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