Building a wine book
Hello, I'm the chef/somm at a medium-sized French brasserie, and I've recently been tasked with upgrading our winelist to a book. I am hoping to get some advice/feedback from those of you who have done this before. My initial reaction to this idea was that we don't do enough business to justify a book. We are at 110k in BTB sales for this year so far, and last year we did 140k for the whole year. I've brought this up with emphasis on how not all wine is truely ageworthy. But it has kind of fallen on deaf ears. So here we are planning a book. We are a French restaurant so I want to be strongly french focused. Our current sales lean strongly french with the breakdown by category for this year, by revenue percentage, being
Bordeaux 25.1
Red Burgundy 14.7
White Burgundy 12.3
Sauvignon Blanc 10.8
Interesting Reds 10.1
Domestic Cab 7
Champagne 6.6
Rose 5.4
Half Bottles 1.7
Interesting Whites 1.4
Domestic Chardonnay 1.1
Domestic Pinot 0.4
To me, this split also indicates that we should build our strengths more and not expand to the amount a book would require. But I would love some feedback about that. My rough design for book categories is here
Wine Book Sections
WHITE
ChampagneOther SparklingWhite BurgundyLoireNew World ChardonnayInternational Sauvignon BlancInteresting WhitesRosé
RED
Red Burgundy (subdivided Nuits, Beaune, other)Bordeaux (Divided by Region)
Rhone/Southern France
New World Pinot
New World Cab
Spain
Italy
Interesting Reds
Small and Large format
Does anything stand out as lacking in this plan for a book? Do you agree or disagree that we dont do enough sales to justify a book? The last thing I want is lots of extra wines, especially cheaper non ageworth wines, sitting around. Any feedback is appreciated. Thank you!