According to the Platter guide, there are currently over 4 000 different bottled wines produced in South Africa. Why then do so few restaurant wine lists reflect this incredible diversity with most choosing to list the same old dreary wines instead? Three possible reasons – cost, convenience and customers.

There's no denying the fact that setting up a restaurant is an expensive business. So when a kindly wine rep comes calling with an offer to give you free umbrellas, corkscrews, ice buckets etc, wants to pay for printing your menus and in addition offers you a large lump of cash, its sometimes hard to think of reasons to turn him down. All you've got to do is to agree to stock all their wines and that's one more financial headache solved. And what is more, it's highly convenient to do it this way too – one supplier for all your wines, one cheque for the lot etc – sorted!

In addition, many customers need the safety net of these well-known brands. Wine can be an intimidating subject, with terrifying sommeliers and weird grape varieties - all these things combine to make customers run for the cover of familiar brand names. If your customers request these wines, you get financial incentives to sell them and your supply chain is easy and quick - why would any restaurateur bother buying wine any other way?

So there's a couple of reasons why so many lists are as they are. And whilst I understand it, it still makes me cross when restaurateurs take the easy way out. Because what they are actually saying when they list the same old boring wines is that you, the paying customer, cannot be trusted to think for yourself, that you wouldn't know a good wine if it bit you on the nose and it's a waste of time to even offer you a decent range because you'd still just choose the familiar favourites. Doesn't this sound like a self-fulfilling prophecy to you?!

So here's my solution to this scenario – sell your wines by the glass. Since the biggest risk people take when they buy an unknown wine is financial (what happens if you buy a bottle and hate it after the first sip?) make it really easy for customers to taste your wines, try a glass and see if they like it and before you know it, they've found a whole new range of tastes and flavours that they enjoy. Any restaurateurs worried about the problems in keeping the wine fresh should try Vacuvin-ing which works really well for a few days. And as long as your staff are confident, enthusiastic and know what they're talking about, that is generally all the time you need to sell the wine.

In the few months that we have been trading our customers have been eagerly lapping up wines made by unknown garagistes and tiny, obscure producers, made from strange grape varieties such as viognier and barbera and at a wide range of prices from R11 a glass up to R57. Drinking wine should be exciting and fun – so don't let unimaginative restaurateurs try and tell you anything different.