Bottle Trouble
At the cozy neighborhood Italian restaurant Urbano Café in Dallas, couples share whole-roasted artichokes and pesto stracci. The lights are low, the tables dressed in white linen. A bottle of Firriato Etna Bianco “Le Sabbie dell’Etna” 2023 costs $45, which is only $15 over retail. That’s because, increasingly, restaurants across the United States have a puzzle to solve: how to incentivize diners to drink. Although it would be premature to bid the old system farewell, a 300 percent bottle markup is no longer a given.
The alcohol industry, and wine especially, seems to be in trouble. A 2025 study showed that America had nine million fewer wine drinkers than it did in 2023. Last year, in California alone, wine-grape growers had to downsize by 38,134 acres. Ignore climate change–related devastation (as some are wont to do) and the industry still faces a slew of problems: ubiquitous belt-tightening, an ever-growing sober movement, tariffs. Then there are the twentysomethings, whose elders drink them under the table, as well as trends toward both reasonable health-consciousness and pseudoscientific “wellness”-based pearl-clutching. Restaurateurs, especially those who rely heavily on their beverage programs, can no longer take wine sales for granted.
“Our markup has never been as high as the current ‘standard,’” says David Butler, who owns the Parisian-style bistro and wine bar Le Caviste in Seattle. Butler, who has no investors to appease, doesn’t cater to the American palate. You’ll find no cocktails, no burgers, no pizza, no California Cabs, just a tightly curated French wine list and a few snacks that include AOC fromage—cheeses certified to indicate specific French regions and traditional preparation methods. “We run a margin more ‘old-timey’ than the prevailing ‘first-glass-pays-wholesale-price-of-bottle’ game most places use.” For example, a glass that another establishment would sell for $17 or $18, you’re more likely to see at Le Caviste for $12. “I'm not giving anything away,” Butler says. “I still make my margin...but it’s a lesser margin than the majority of my colleagues have.”
At the Michelin-recommended Madeira Park in Atlanta, owner and wine director Tim Willard says that he and his team work on lower margins, so diners will really “feel” the value of the wine they buy. “If they are used to spending $75 on a bottle of wine, we want our $75 bottles to be of higher quality than they are used to,” Willard says. “This builds long-term trust and hopefully keeps them coming back.” In addition, more valuable wines get lower markups: A bottle of 1996 Pichon-Longueville Comtesse de Lalande sells at the retail-markup price—$699—more than the wholesale price the restaurant paid, but hardly the price the consumer has been conditioned to expect. (At any nearby steakhouse, for instance, that bottle might go for closer to $,1500.) Willard’s business strategy isn’t simply to profit off each bottle, but to make his restaurant a go-to for serious wine folk, a more sustainable long-term plan.
Other restaurants find different ways to keep customers interested, including wine-centric programming. a.Kitchen in Philadelphia hosts “Vine-yl Nights,” bringing in guest winemakers, guest sommeliers, guest chefs, and guest DJs, aiming to attract a younger demographic—the demographic least likely to seek out wine without prompting.
Bottlehouse in Seattle focuses on that demographic, too, or more broadly, on customers who aren’t necessarily knowledgeable about wine. The wine list eschews technical language for language that provides an entry point. “For example,” says founder Henry Schock, “Rather than a guest just seeing ‘Melon de Bourgogne / Loire-inspired / Willamette Valley,’ he’ll see, ‘This is kind of our salty, citrusy, oysters-on-a-patio white—super fresh, mineral-driven, and easy to love if you like Muscadet or crisp coastal whites.’ Or instead of letting an orange wine feel niche or intimidating, we might position it as, ‘A really good gateway orange— textured and savory, but still clean and super food-friendly.’”
But if it sounds like restaurateurs are tap-dancing just to get a glass of wine on the table, that’s not always the case. “The level of business at Le Caviste has gone up since we opened in 2013,” Butler says. “In fact, 2025 was the best year we’ve ever had, in terms of both sales and covers. We don’t see a decrease in wine consumption, at all—and articles to that point always seem, frankly, a bit surreal to us.”
Willard does acknowledge that consumption is down, but believes that drinkers have simply become more discerning. “People are just making better decisions, seeking quality over quantity.” It’s true that cheap, mass-produced wines are faring the worst these days. According to the 2026 Direct to Consumer Wine Shipping Report, shipments of wines in the under-$15 range have plummeted by 67 percent since 2020. Willard believes the dip in consumption is a market correction. He identifies what he sees as the real issue: “…decades of overproduction, and more recently, a complete saturation of the market in almost every category of wine.” He adds, “It was never sustainable.”
Diana Spechler is a novelist and essayist who contributes to the New York Times, Saveur, the Guardian, Texas Monthly, Bon Appetit, Washington Post, Harper's, and many other publications. She also writes a newsletter about travel called Dispatches From the Road.
