By the glass
Price, company, variety and opportunity. Drinking wine by the glass should have been a trend long ago
It is becoming increasingly common to see people ordering wine by the glass at a restaurant table. Whether it is because they are having lunch or dinner on their own, because they want wines different from those of their companions, or simply because the price of a good bottle of wine is prohibitive for anyone with common sense. A few years ago, there were very few options for wine by the glass in the vast majority of Portuguese restaurants, and even in other European countries the practice wasn’t that common – though it was more so than in Portugal. What was generally available by the glass was the ‘house wine’, a term that usually only specified the region (‘It’s from the Alentejo’) and about which we couldn’t find out much.
É cada vez mais comum vermos pessoas a pedir vinhos a copo à mesa de um restaurante. Seja porque estão a almoçar ou a jantar sozinhas, porque querem vinhos diferentes dos das suas companhias ou simplesmente porque o preço de uma boa garrafa de vinho é proibitivo para alguém com bom senso. Há uns anos, havia pouquíssimas opções de vinho a copo na larga maioria de restaurantes portugueses, e mesmo em outros países da Europa a prática não era tão comum – embora o fosse mais do que em Portugal. O que geralmente se encontrava a copo era o “vinho da casa”, uma referência que por norma só tinha região (“É do Alentejo”) e da qual não conseguíamos saber grande coisa.
