How times have changed!

The date was January 16, 1983---my and my wife's first wedding anniversary.
We were young and poor, but we had a wine cellar with 300 bottles! Wine was
our passion: I literally would make decisions like whether to pay the light
bill or buy that '70 Palmer, and the electric company rarely won out. In
fact the wine would be probably be best by candlelight anyway! For our anniversary
we decided to try the hot new upmarket restaurant in town. That "town" is
Richmond, Virginia. I can assure you the wine scene had not yet been born in
Richmond. The vast majority of restaurants offered only "Burgundy" or
"Chablis:" cheap California mass-market wines bearing not an iota of resemblance to their namesakes.

However, there was an old, well-established high-end restaurants in town,
one of which had a fine French chef and an extensive cellar
stocked with fine French wines. Well, this new place advertised that it was
the best place to find true haute cuisine and fine wines. Since we wanted a
good wine selection from which to choose our anniversary dinner beverages,
we decided to try out this new kid on the block.

We were led to a romantic corner table complete with fine linens and
candlelight. I asked the waiter to see the wine list. Then, to our
wonderment, there appeared not just a wine list, but a sommelier bedecked with a
huge, ostentatious silver tastevin hanging on a big chain around his
tuxedo'd neck. As he gracefully handed me the large, leather-bound wine list,
I just knew we were in for a treat.

Then I opened it. There were, at most, a dozen wines on the list. I recall
most of them. They included Almaden Chablis, Gallo Hearty Burgundy, Blue Nun
Liebfraumilch, Mateus Rose and a bunch of other grocery-store wines. What's
more, the prices for these "rare" bottles were four to five times higher
than one would have paid in the grocery store. I specifically remember the
Blue Nun going for about 24 dollars...in 1983!

I called the sommelier over and asked if, perhaps, he had a "reserve" wine
list he would share with us, but no, this was the only list. So I frankly
asked him why the restaurant didn't stock any GOOD wines? He
answered, haughtily (and very untruthfully), that those were the only wines
the Virginia Alcoholic Beverage Control would permit them to sell. So he
covered ineptitude with ignorance.

Fortunately, there was one sleeper on the list. Only one. Six bucks bought
us a bottle of 1976 Schloss Eltz QbA Riesling. That was actually slightly
UNDER the retail price of that very nice bottle. Go figure! There were also
a couple of excellent dishes on the menu that went nicely with the wine. The
meal was very good, and the atmosphere was appropriate, but the wine steward
and wine list were all show and no go. That restaurant stayed still open for many years, but we were never moved to go back again.