Wine Focus: Beating the great wine buff bluff...

There's a Michael McIntyre sketch that sums up perfectly the confusion and terror caused when ordering wine.

"When the waiter comes and says would you like a look at the wine list, he might as well say would you like a book of gibberish. Ignore all wording, focus entirely on prices. 'I think this one', you say. You have no idea what you're doing, you're just faking confidence. 'A fine choice,' says the waiter. He has no idea about wine either.

"Then they come over and show you the bottle. This is an important part of the process. You have to stop your conversation to stare at a bottle. This is all part of the Bullshit Production. You all have roles within it. This is the stare at the bottle bit."

So let's take this opportunity to come clean shall we? Most barstaff don't know much about wine. Many don't care, to be frank. But most customers in pubs don't know much about wine either. So with both sides caught in a stalemate of ignorance, afraid and embarrassed to admit to the other their mutual distrust, there's really no problem is there?

Well, sadly there is. Too many pubs have either caught wind of the trend for varietals such as pinot grigio, and have populated their wine list with four of these and little else. Or at the other end of the spectrum they've ignored the category completely, giving customers a simple choice of red or white.

And Jilly Goolden, I know you mean well, but waxing lyrical about how a chardonnay tickles the tonsils then tap-dances across the tongue in slippers of honey, Strawberry Pop-Tarts and tyres, is likely to earn you a slap. The pub is categorically not the place for wine buffs.

But with rivals such as casual dining restaurant chains improving their range and service, the lack of even basic wine knowledge among many front-line barstaff is costing pubs business.

Licensees have largely ignored brushing up on their wine knowledge, most likely because it's a terrifying subject to get started with and because seemingly the demand hasn't been there. If you can get away with handing over a glass of pretty much anything when the request comes over the bar for a glass of 'white' then why would you bother?

But there are two companies in the trade which have decided to take the matter in hand. One is wine supplier Enotria, and the other is London-based pub group ETM.

Tackling complacency

ETM, owned by Tom and Ed Martin, has eight pubs in central London, all with a food offer. Fed up with what they describe as a complacency about wine in pubs, they decided to take the matter in hand. The group has created its own wine training scheme. Managers, rather than frontline bar and waiting staff, will be taught in detail everything from regions of origin, grape types and wine styles to understanding terroir (that's the soil, climate and processes that go towards making a particular wine, to you and me).

"Wine is very complex. It's an endless subject," says Paulo Brammer, ETM Group's beverage operations manager. "There's too much to learn. There's too much to understand. I think it's much easier to learn about your four starters than learn about your 120 wines. But wine sales account for 25 per cent of all business here. The only thing we can do now to increase that is to have staff actively selling it.

"It's always difficult to get staff to recommend a wine. They are sometimes afraid of customers and what they know about wine. You have to have a comfortable knowledge to go up to a table and try to suggest whatever they are after."

To rectify this, ETM has chosen an initial batch of 10 managers to take the course, which is based on the WSET (Wines and Spirit Education Trust) curriculum at intermediate and advanced levels. Once they have passed the course the staff will become in-house wine ambassadors. It will be their role to pass on everything they have learned, in a simpler way, to other staff.

"One thing I'm not doing is training our staff to be wine geeks. I don't want them talking rubbish about wine. Wine should only be spoken about with people who want to speak about it. Apart from that, it's just a drink like any other," says Brammer.

But how much do staff really need to know? That really does depend on how much customers want to find out. The Garrison on Bermondsey High Street in London refers to itself as a gastro pub and takes its wine offer seriously, as it attracts customers who know their wine. Manager Carl Woodman says: "We don't want the staff to know about each wine in depth, but they should be able to talk about them all confidently. They need to be able to describe the weight, the body, a couple of flavours and offer a food recommendation."

The pub has six wine suppliers and makes use of free training offered by each rather than run its own training scheme, something which waitress Andrea Meyer says is essential. "If we're expected to do a professional job, we need to know what we're talking about," she reasons.

Too much information?

However, Anna Cooney says consumers generally don't care about the details - they just want a wine that tastes good. Cooney founded a speed dating evening, called Grape Vine Social, based entirely around wine tasting, six years ago.

"People just don't care if it's grown on the slopes of Mount Whatever," she says. "No matter how interested you are, you can glaze over pretty quickly when given too much information about how grapes are grown, the climate, and the wine grower.

"At the end of the day, you're either going to like the wine or not. What we want to teach people is that if you've had a French chardonnay and hated it, it doesn't mean you hate chardonnay as one grown in Australia is going to be very different."

John Grieveson, marketing director at wine supplier Enotria, agrees. The company has just launched a free training scheme available to pubs that buy its wines. The Serving with Confidence course has been designed to simplify wine and give staff basic knowledge, which is all they need.

Grieveson argues that many training courses are too technical. Young barstaff who don't drink wine are not that interested. And consumers don't require such in-depth information. All they want to know about is flavour.

"The question was, how do we take them from being order takers into wine sales people?" he says. "There is a belief by barstaff that customers know more than they actually do. There is a huge amount of value to be unlocked if staff just have the confidence to recommend and make suggestions.

"Often staff ask closed questions as they are terrified of having to engage with customers."

Enotria's training course breaks wines down into four basic types based on colour and flavour. White and rosé is split into delicate and dry or full and fruity. Red into light and lively or big and bold. All wines that Enotria supplies have been put into these categories. Training is tailored to each wine list.

The course also teaches staff a fact about each wine, such as where it was grown and appropriate food matches. This, says Grieveson, is all you need to know.

But the course also covers customer service, basic information on grape varieties and which food styles go with which wine styles. Enotria is hoping as many of its customers as possible take on the free training, as a lack of knowledge is the biggest barrier to sales, and after all, the demand is out there.

"I think the reality is that pubs are not competing against pubs," says Grieveson. "Therefore the benchmark of good wine service needs to be set outside of the industry and beyond the old-fashioned way wine is served in pubs."