Not long ago, these friends and lovers had limited options. The businessmen might have gone with the bottle and lurched back to their offices, where one would doze off during a board meeting and the other would delete his company's annual report from the computer system. The newlyweds might have compromised with a lackluster bottle of rose to suit their disparate meals and each gone to sleep that night wondering if they hadn't made a big mistake by getting married. The curious couple might have dropped a bundle on dinner and the bottle, hated the wine and thereafter ordered only mundane table vintages.
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Wines by the glass might have been the solution for these people. But until recently, even in restaurants with extensive wine lists, such wines came in three basic flavors: chablis, burgundy and rose. The gap between a good bottle of wine and a glass of generic pasteurized plonk remained a black hole of dashed expectations and unfulfilled dining pleasures.
The problem? The dearth of half-bottles. Although wineries have grossly neglected diners' thirst for half-bottles, many restaurateurs are now taking the matter into their own hands, drawing out their corkscrews and offering their guests a taste of the good stuff - by the glass.
Wines by the glass were introduced to Philadelphia in the mid-1970s at Frog restaurant, and a few restaurants followed suit. But they ran into a problem: Delicate wines have a tendency to deteriorate and spoil soon after being exposed to air. Even if the cork is replaced, oxygen has entered the bottle and started the process of oxidation (the destructive chemical changes that turn a lovely wine into vinegar). Consequently, only a few wines could be featured; otherwise, restaurateurs could watch their profits go down the drain, literally.
