A new law has now come into effect in the US state of Virginia that allows customers to “bring your own bottle” (BYOB) of wine. The General Assembly passed the law earlier this year and according to that law, customers may now walk into a restaurant with their own bottle of wine and have it with their dinner.
However, an important requirement of the law to take particular note of is that the law is voluntary. Firstly, restaurants can choose whether and when their customers can bring in their own wine and, secondly, they can choose how much of a fee to charge the customer for the privilege.
The new law allows restaurants to charge a corkage fee if customers plan on bringing their own wine, so they don’t lose out on revenues. Some restaurants are believed to be charging between $20 and $25 for the service, and many restaurant owners are not sure about how much they are going to charge or if they are even going to participate at all.
One restaurant owner said: “We’re going to hopefully encourage guests to, first of all, not bring a bottle of wine that we sell already, and second of all, only bring wine if it’s a really special wine for a special occasion.”
The BYOB wine practice has been tried in various countries over the last couple of decades but, perhaps surprisingly, with little success. In New Zealand there were a significant number of BYOB restaurants, usually suburban Asian or Italian eateries or traditional bistros, which all allowed BYOB and only charged a minimal corkage fee, and yet today the BYOB phenomenon has faded.
In New York quite a few high-end restaurants have allowed customers to bring their own “special” wine, but defining what a “special” wine is could prove difficult. Theoretically it should be a bottle that has some significance, maybe something that has been lovingly matured and has a bit of bottle-age. It may be a bottle that was given as a gift to celebrate a special occasion or even a bottle of someone’s birth year given by a discerning grandparent or parent at their birth.
In other words, it should be something that is not likely to be found on your standard restaurant wine list or something that’s been grabbed from the shelf of your local supermarket.
The trend is also catching on in some of London’s smartest dining establishments, where passionate food and wine lovers are allowed to bring their own bottle because they are keen to drink a particular wine with a particular food, or just because they have a very special bottle of wine that’s been lovingly looked after for a number of years and has reached its peak and simply needs drinking.