When you're eating out at a restaurant, especially a slightly fancy one, ordering the cheapest bottle of wine on the list can feel like a faux pas. You don't want the waiter - and maybe the people you're dining with - thinking that you're kind of cheap, too.
But one top sommelier has warned that ordering the second or third-cheapest bottle on the list can be a foolish move. Top sommeliers know their customers do this to look a little classier, and they may have doctored their wine list to take advantage.
"Knowing that it will sell swiftly," Mark Oldman writes in his book How to Drink Like a Billionaire, "[the sommelier] may have slotted an overstocked bottle into the position on the list. Even worse, he may have marked up this wine more than any other, making it potentially the worst value on the list."
According to The Independent, Oldman advises in his book that we are actually "better served to order the cheapest wine, which diners often neglect out of fear or embarrassment and thus is often a better value."
"Just make sure you do so at a restaurant that cares about its wine, where even modestly prices wines are of admirable quality," the sommelier adds.
So there we go; it's time to take the stigma out of ordering a bottle of house white, whether we're dining at Nando's or somewhere with a Michelin star.
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