A fresh approach to wine sales. (Food & Beverage).

The power of a glass of wine to aid conviviality and break down barriers takes on a new meaning when times are hard. But it is more important than ever--when dining venues of all kinds, including private clubs, are struggling to find guests--that the presentation, price, and service of that wine deliver value with every sip.

Involved in delivering that value are a number of considerations, including knowing your audience, pricing, and freshness of product. By devoting extra attention to the way in which wine is served and marketed in your club you can increase both member satisfaction and wine sales.

One person who understands the issues revolving around wine sales implicitly is Jillian Balance, the sommelier at the Bacara Resort & Spa in Santa Barbara, CA. Balance came to Bacara a year ago. She developed her skills under Kevin Zraly at Windows on the World, the famed restaurant that disappeared Sept. 11, along with an estimated 76 of its 450 employees, when the north tower of the World Trade Center collapsed. "It was a great place to work. I was treated well and there was a lot of diversity in terms of people from many countries working there," she recalled. Zraly has trained some of the top sommeliers in the world, as well as developing a wildly popular wine course and writing a series of books on wine for consumers and food professionals.

It was quite a different world that Balance dropped into a year ago when she came to Bacara. "It's been challenging because it's our first year trying to get to know the clientele and figure out what it is they want to drink," she noted. After her time at Windows on the World, and knowing that expectations of wine value at a super-high-end resort like Bacara might be great, she was frustrated with what she saw when she visited other properties.

"I was tired of going to Ritz Carltons and sitting in a beautiful restaurant and getting Corbett Canyon for $8 a glass," she said.

The Bacara wine program is, in reality, three programs that Balance developed for the resort's three dining venues. For Bacara's Bistro, the restaurant most guests go to the night they arrive, Balance tries to focus on local Santa Barbara wines--Babcock, Mehlville, Buttonwood, and the like. At the Spa Cafe she offers organically grown product.

Bacara's fine-dining restaurant, Miro, is named after the painter and sculptor Joan Miro. Original Miro sculptures are displayed in the restaurant and the place settings and other decor borrow notes from the artist's palette.

"In Miro, people definitely want to be adventurous," Balance said. Miro offers 650 wines in a list that runs 23 pages. Some dining parties take the bull by the horns. "I had a table of 20 the other night that ordered 10 different wines from Super Tuscan to Bordeaux" Balance recalled. For the rest, she offers opportunities for the guests to sample wines that they might otherwise never come across.

Miro has a seven-course degustation menu, which includes half-glass tastings of three different wines. In addition, the restaurant offers 15 wines and champagnes by the glass and another 15 ports and Madeiras. Bacara offers 35 different wines by the glass resort-wide. "I try to base the wine-by-the-glass selection on the best value-to-quality--for example New Zealand Sauvignon Blancs at $8." Her costs on those wines run at about 25 percent of selling price.

Balance has some major caveats regarding offering wine by the glass. "I'm always leery when I go into a restaurant and see so many wines by the glass," she said. "You know they can't all be fresh unless the staff is drinking them at the end of the night. If I see 30 different wines by the glass, I say `pour me the one you opened last.'"

Balance's concern is well placed. Wine is an organic product, which begins to deteriorate from its peak flavor and bouquet from the moment the bottle is opened. Bacara uses a wine preservation system called Le Verre de Vin, marketed by Bermar America. The Le Verre de Vin system, developed in England, creates a precise vacuum in the bottle which preserves it without "closing down" the esters and phenols which create bouquet, Richard Hewitt, president of Bermar said. The system resembles the home wine "vacuum" pumps only in that it uses a single-direction rubber stopper. The precision vacuum was developed after years of research into the chemistry of wine preservation.

Hewitt acknowledged that there are several ways to preserve the integrity of product in a wine-by-the-glass program. The most radical is the simplest: Remainders of bottles can be given away to staff or used in cooking at the end of the day.

Nitrogen preservation systems such as Cruvinet, which uses a cold-rack display case, have been popular for a number of years in by-the-glass programs, despite their high cost. Such systems work and their display cases help sell wine, Hewitt said. But he added that they require special care and maintenance to make sure that the tubes that carry the wine from bottle to glass are kept sanitary, lest they contaminate the wine.

At Bacara, Balance takes an additional step to preserve her wines' freshness for service by-the-glass. Bottles are kept cellared rather than behind the bar. Temperature, she notes, can be almost as great a foe of freshness as oxygen and other contaminants.

Steven Kolpan, co-author of Exploring Wine: The Culinary Institute of America's Guide to Wines of the World (recently released in a new edition), takes a radical approach to wine-by-the-glass. "I believe in giving wine away," Kolpan said.

Kolpan said that in order for his approach to work, almost all wines on the list should be under $100 per bottle. Pricier wines won't work, he stated. "Someone comes in and says, `I see you have the Robert Sinskey Pinot Carneros Napa Reserve 1997.' (This example wine would sell for $85 in Kolpan's hypothetical restaurant). You say, `I'll be happy to open the bottle and let you try it.'"

Therein lies the hook in Kolpan's approach: Once the member has sampled this extraordinary wine he/she--and probably one or more of their guests--will buy a glass at by-the-glass prices. "My experience is that you'll sell at least two glasses. You've sold at least two glasses you write off (the remainder of the bottle) as promotion for the restaurant."

When the restaurant staff member offers a taste of that 1997 Shafer Cabernet, "the guest can only say `yes' or `no,'" Kolpan noted. But Kolpan has a caveat in making his concept succeed: "In order to see successful fine wine by-the-glass, you have to have absolutely-trained people on the floor."

One of Kolpan's pet peeves is talking with owners of fine dining destinations who have a pastry chef, but no sommelier. "I ask, how many $40 pastries do you sell? Why don't you have a trained sommelier? Trained staff is absolutely necessary."

Kolpan suggests enlisting your wine merchant in the campaign for wine-by-the-glass sales. If you buy a large lot of a particular wine, ask for six extra bottles free. Then train a waitstaff member as a "salesperson" for wine by-the-glass.

"Give the salesperson (a price of) less than $6 per glass, and have them bring it around on a tray and pronounce it properly. If the members like it they'll order it at the table, and if they don't they'll order something else because they realize that this is a wine destination." Alternatively Kolpan said, use the wine that you received for free as a marketing tool for your club: "Pour them a sampling and don't ask them to buy it, and they're going to feel very good about the restaurant and the club. In clubs there are repeat clientele. One way to attract members back frequently is with a very good wine program."

Regarding freshness of opened by-the-glass bottles, Kolpan has a very simple philosophy. If you don't sell it over the course of the evening, either use it as part of your continuing effort at staff wine training and/or give it away to your members as a marketing tool.

On by-the-glass pricing, Kolpan's approach is equally straightforward: Pour generously and charge accordingly. "Pour at least five ounces and charge $14-$15 per glass," he said.

Kolpan is dead-set against bottle pricing that doubles the retail price. Knowledgeable guests know the retail prices. Instead, he suggests marking up from the wholesale price. "Perception of value is everything," he stated. "When it comes to a wine list you can be in a very good restaurant and people are still going to look for value."

Koplan's book suggests an approach called the "hot zone" in which either the average price per check or the average price per entree serves as the starting point for pricing wine. The entree approach, which works for a wider range of restaurants, works as follows: 1.) Calculate the average price of a main course; 2.) Subtract one-fourth from the average main course price to get the bottom of the hot zone. 3.) Add three-fourths of the main course price to get the top end of the hot zone. For example, a menu with an average entree price of $18.50 would have a "hot zone" range of $13.50 to $31.50.

Wholesale price of wine or entree price alone should not dictate the price of more expensive wines, Kolpan said. Rather than dealing in across-the-board percentages, Kolpan suggests a more complicated but value-laden approach that deals with the net profit from the entire list. "You establish how much you have to make on this bottle based on the mix of the list. Pick wines that will help you make your dollar point."