Prep sheet 004 — the glass
Add a sommelier and the wine stops being a guess in a supermarket aisle. You get a short buy list before you shop — matched to the menu you have chosen and to whatever you were going to spend anyway — and then it gets poured course by course by somebody who can tell you, in one sentence, why it works. Seven days a week, mornings included, on any tier.
You buy the wine. We do not sell it, buy it on your behalf or bring it with us — same as the mixologist, and for the same licensing reason.
The list
Everything else about the evening ends when the glasses are washed. The list does not: it is three or four bottles, named, with what each one is for, and it works again next time you cook that menu without us in the room.
Before
Once the menu is settled you get three or four bottles to buy, chosen for those dishes and priced at whatever you say you want to spend. Supermarkets count. So does the wine shop you already use. It is advice rather than an order form, and every bottle on it is yours before our sommelier has touched anything.
During
Opened at the right time, decanted if it needs it, served at a temperature somebody has actually thought about, and matched to the course in front of you. One sentence on why, not a lecture, and only if you want it. Anyone not drinking gets the same care: something poured on purpose, in the same glass as everyone else.
Never
We hold no licence and need none: the wine is bought by you, from whoever you like, at the price on the shelf. Nothing is purchased on your behalf, nothing arrives in the crate, nothing appears on an invoice afterwards, and there is no version of this where we make money on a bottle.
The budget
The fee is the fee. What you spend on wine is a number you set, and the list is built down to it rather than up from it.
The worry is reasonable, so here is the answer plainly: we do not sell the wine, so there is nothing in it for us whether you spend eight pounds a bottle or eighty. Tell your sommelier the number and the list comes back at that number. Say ten pounds and you get a ten-pound list, chosen properly, with the reasoning intact.
Most of what a sommelier is actually for is the cheap end. Knowing which eight-pound bottle is worth drinking is harder, and more useful, than knowing which forty-pound one is — and a menu the wine suits at ten pounds a bottle beats the same menu with something expensive that fights it.
If the honest answer for your menu is that you do not need this, you will be told so. A session with beer and cider on the table does not need a wine list, and neither does a Tuesday.
What it costs
A supplement on top of a session, never a booking on its own. Prices are placeholders until commercial sign-off.
Adding a sommelier to any tier is +£110. Adding front of house as well is +£180, which is £20 less than adding the two separately — the same saving the mixologist bundle carries. The tiers themselves are unchanged: the three session prices are here. Sessions in PL10–PL21 carry the same £20 travel charge as any other, and a morning start adds £25.
One drinks specialist per session, not two. A sommelier or a mixologist, whichever suits the evening — two people whose whole job is the drink cannot work one home kitchen without doing each other’s. Cocktails are Fridays and Saturdays only; a sommelier is any day of the week.
Ingredients are invoiced afterwards at cost with the receipts, the same as any session. Wine never appears on that invoice, or on any other, because we never bought it. Cancel free up to 48 hours out; inside 48 hours we charge half, because your chef has already shopped.
The room
One thing genuinely matters here, and it has to happen before anybody arrives.
Wine needs time that the evening does not have. Whites and anything sparkling want two or three hours in a fridge, reds want to be somewhere cooler than a modern kitchen, and a bottle bought on the way home from work is warm on both counts. Buy the list the day before if you can, put the whites in the fridge that morning, and the difference is larger than anything a glass can fix.
Beyond that: a surface to open and pour on, and the bottles in the house by the time the chef arrives. Glasses and a decanter come with your sommelier and go home with them, so you do not need matching sets — and if you would rather use your own, say so and they will.
If a bottle on the list turns out to be sold out, buy the nearest thing and say so on the night. It is a list, not a prescription, and the whole point of having somebody there is that they can work with what is actually on the table.
Questions
Anything else, email hello@forkingchefing.com and a person answers.
Next
The booking questions ask which service level you want, so pick the sommelier there and tell us roughly what you spend on a bottle. Seven days a week, mornings included, confirmed once we have spoken.