Speaking as a resident of Melbourne who has enjoyed and intends to continue to enjoy the freedom permitted in certain local restaurants to bring your own wine, I feel strongly about the rigid and authoritarian tones recently adopted by John Nieuwenhuysen, the academic who framed Victoria’s liquor deregulation. Dr Nieuwenhuysen was quoted last week in the Melbourne Age as saying: ‘You don’t ask to go to a restaurant with food, why should you ask to go there with wine? It is just a remnant of a restrictionist past.’ This is simply absurd. For whatever reason to begin with, Melbourne restaurants have a rich history of enabling patrons to bring onto their premises the wine of their choosing. This is surely one of the reasons why the restaurant scene is such a part of Melbourne’s fabric. Times are tough and people have less money to spend. Many of the restaurants that do not allow patrons to BYO wine must be very nervous right now, especially if they’re marking up their wines by more than 100%. It is substantially cheaper to wine and dine at BYO restaurants if budget is an issue. Furthermore, people have the opportunity to partner food with wines that might be rare or else cellared for several years, which for many would be prohibitively expensive if they were to buy the same wine from a restaurant list. It is very un-restrictionist to think there are places where they can really enjoy these special bottles. Just because you might take wine to a BYO or a licensed restaurant that permits the practice, it doesn’t mean you’re a cheapskate. And it needn’t cost the restaurant money. I have no objection with restaurants charging a realistic corkage rate to cover the labour costs associated with handling and pouring wine and cleaning glasses afterwards. To suggest that the BYO phenomenon was restrictionist is to miss the point entirely. It is restrictionist for the public to be limited to the often shallow, poorly chosen and over-priced selections offered by many restaurateurs. Many wines on restaurant lists are too young, too expensive or entirely unsuited to the cuisine being presented. Many are listed simply because they are either rare or trendy, not because they are good to drink. Many get there because they come from the right variety and right region and offer the restaurateur the right margin. As long as they are drinkable, taste or quality might have little to do with the equation. Often, I think to myself, I’d much prefer to have brought my own.
