Clark County Corkage Crackdown?
It was reported to ELV yesterday that the ban on bringing your own wine into restaurants (in exchange for the payment of a corkage fee), has now spread into Clark County, i.e. every restaurant south of Sahara Avenue. Meaning: the Strip and all points south.
According to our source, the management of The Tillerman on East Flamingo informed diners that Clark County considers it illegal to allow patrons to bring their own bottles of wine into county restaurants. ELV has not confirmed this with Clark County enforcement officers (as we did with the City of Las Vegas officials months ago), but if the County is enforcing this ban, it means that a lot of prominent oenophiles are going to be most unhappy when they seek to open that long-held bottle of ‘59 La Tache at Delmonico to celebrate their latest stock split….or more accurately these days — to drown their sorrows.
ELV will be checking with Clark County in the coming week to determine its official position on this critical issue to the health and welfare of our general, classified-growth-swilling populace.
Restaurant reviews, quips, picks and pans-with some seriously salivating history-from the man who eats his way through Sin City every day.
January 13th, 2009 at 2:08 pm
Well, this is a big problem for me. I have been bringing my own wine to Vegas restaurants for years. Contrary to the customers EV referenced, I always bring something aged and impressive. That’s why I collect and store wine, to have the ability to drink a great bottle of wine with dinner. I don’t cook enough at home to justify my collection. I need to be able to bring wine to restaurants.
Most red wines on wine lists are way too young. Properly aged bottles are rare and inordinately expensive. I never object to paying corkage, and, if it is waived, I leave an additional gratuity to make it up to the server and the wine staff. I also almost always offer a taste of my wine to the sommelier and head waiter.
Like most things in life, it’s the people who abuse the rules that end up making it difficult for the rest of us. Why base the rules on a few drunks who insist on bringing in magnums of cheap wine? Surely, there are plenty of other remedies to be used against these types of folks.
Banning outside wine will force me to order wines which are inferior to what I would normally bring or pay so much that I will need to curtail my dinners out. In either case, the result will be that I will not dine out as much in Vegas restaurants. Especially in this weak economy, I assume, most restaurants don’t want to lose their most loyal customers.