When the question of tipping on wine comes up, I think of the late/great baseball player and announcer Tim McCarver.
My workout buddy Jackie Aarons, once asked me how much to tip on a $1,200 bottle of wine. Jackie owns a wine and liquor distribution business in Memphis. He grew up with Tim McCarver, the great baseball player and announcer. Jackie has a group of buddies that would fly up to NY every year to go to a game and then out to dinner with Tim.
One year they went to a very nice Italian restaurant in New York City. When it came time to order the wine the Tim McCarver deferred to Jackie saying: “You are the wine guy, you order the wine”. Jackie ordered a bottle of wine not knowing what it would cost. He said: “I knew I was in trouble when there was no price on the menu and they decanted the wine without even asking”.
Jackie returned to Memphis and was retelling the story to his workout buddies and then turns to me asking: “You are the New Yorker, a food and wine guy, how much do you tip on a $1,200 bottle of wine. I responded with: You have to go with the flow, in that company, you gotta act like you belong. Go with 20%, besides, you can afford it.
Some would say that I over tip. Having grown upping caddying at a country club, I know what it is to work for tips. As Bill Murray character Carl in Caddyshack says “You expect a little something for the effort”. You may not get “total consciousness” on your death-bed as Carl the did, but you might get 20%, which is nice. Check out the clip.https://youtu.be/RnHaTlI1p7o
There is a great article from the New York Times on how much to tip on an expensive bottle of wine. https://dinersjournal.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/01/the-answer-man-tipping-on-wine/Ironically, the article author takes the same tack as I did in saying he never would order that expensive a wine. The author did real research (unlike me) and the consensus he came up with is also to tip 20%. It is just safer.
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