Illustration by Rachel Harris
We’ve all heard the phrase “Size matters,” and in today’s wine world, those words tend to ring especially true. With alcohol contributing to about a third of all driving-related deaths, I’ve noticed that wine drinkers seem to be “drinking less, but better.”
Restaurants have also risen to the occasion by providing more by-the-glass selections, including premium offerings in popular categories like chardonnay and cabernet. The difficulty of this approach is keeping those premium (read: expensive) wines fresh—which won’t happen unless the restaurant is moving at least a bottle of each of its offerings per day. One solution: half-bottles of wine.
Safety aside, restaurants with half-bottle programs are also on the rise because wineries that never used to produce the 375 milliliter size are now doing so. Yet half-bottles (also known as demi bottles and mistakenly as “splits”) are nothing new. I’ve served a half-bottle from as far back as the 1949 vintage, a Château La Conseillante from Pomerol. While half-bottles can still be hard to find at your local wine shop or restaurant, that wine list is growing. I recently discovered a website, Half Wit Wines (halfwitwines.com), that boasts the largest collection of half-bottles in the U.S., with more than 1,300 varieties in stock.
More and more wine—including the higher-quality variety—is now available, ranging from Krug Champagne to cult Napa cabernets to Beaujolais nouveau and everything in between. Many high-end restaurants on both coasts have made their half-bottle selections a focal point, offering a wide array. In the San Francisco Bay Area, you’ll find great 375 milliliter bottles at Gary Danko, Spruce, and The French Laundry (with a mini list of 250 selections and growing). On the East Coast, Per Se, Daniel, and Jean Georges suggest half-bottles to broaden the wine experience for multicourse dinners. In St. Louis, wider selections of half-bottles can be found at establishments with impressive full-bottle lists, such as Truffles, Harvest, 33 Wine Shop & Tasting Bar, and Annie Gunn’s.
Unfortunately, half-bottles aren’t typically half the price of a standard 750 milliliter bottle, because glass, corks, and labels still add cost, regardless of the bottle size. That said, I prefer a freshly opened half-bottle of white burgundy to risking a glass of an oxidative expression of the same thing—or investing in a full bottle when that might not be so prudent.
A former sommelier at The French Laundry, Hoel currently serves as a senior wine advisor for Soutirage, a Napa Valley wine merchant and advisory firm.
