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Class by the glass

Picture: Iain Gillespie

They used to be displayed on a laminated page that hung around for donkey's years: a house red of indeterminate origin or grape; a rose; a couple of whites including maybe a buttery chardonnay and a glass of Aussie sparkling. Nothing too adventurous and nothing changed.

Whether it was in a pub or restaurant, wine by the glass was the wine list's poor cousin.

Cheap would dominate, though cheerful couldn't exactly be guaranteed as no-one knew how long the bottle had been open. Order by the glass and you'd be taking a chance on oxidisation as well as quality.

But the times are a-changing and choosing a wine by the glass today is a great opportunity to venture outside your comfort zone. A Spanish tempranillo instead of a Margaret River cab merlot, perhaps? Or push out the boat and sample a glass of premium German riesling, say, instead of the usual Kiwi sav blanc?

Rob Bates-Smith, of East Fremantle's The Wine Store wine bar, is one who believes serving wine by the glass has undergone a welcome transformation in recent times.

"I think a couple of things have changed - the scope or cross-section of wine that now exists on wine lists has been one but there's also the frequency of change," he says.

"A number of years ago, wine lists - large or small - would be laminated and stuck as is for a season or maybe as long as six months or a year. The trend now is to have wines, ideally, for a couple of nights or at most for a week.

"We change the list every week."

Bates-Smith is one of The Wine Store's four tasters who sit down every Wednesday for a blind tasting.

"Our aim is to achieve a cross-section of wine styles," he explains. "Typically, it sits around 50-50 international and domestic. I like to have quite lean, acid-driven wine, something a little bit more savoury, something more round."

At the Boulevard Hotel in Floreat, Paul Maley assumed wine-buying duties six years ago and set about doubling the number on offer by the glass from the seven or eight on its then list.

The reason is simple: there's a demand today for more choice.

"People's appreciation of wines and knowledge about them has gone up in recent times," he says.

Plus, the catchment area of the Boulevard takes in an older demographic more likely to head overseas and to appreciate wines encountered during their travels

"They're searching for wines they hear about and get to know, and buying wines by the glass is a great opportunity for people to be able to try these," Maley says.

By its very nature, serving wines by the glass also makes it easier to satisfy a patron wavering between one or more glasses of, say, a shiraz. The simple solution, Maley says, is to give the customer a sampling of two or three shirazes and let the choice be an informed one.

But the Boulevard never forgets it's a pub first and foremost.

"We're not going to sell first-growth Bordeaux," says Maley, who nominates price limits of $13 to $14 for a glass and $130 for a bottle.

At the other end of the market sits Print Hall, one of Perth's fine-dining joints. Its 100-page wine list covering 22,000 bottles in its cellar is so celebrated it has collected two different awards for best wine list in the country this year alone - and the restaurant has not yet celebrated its first anniversary.

Assistant head sommelier Jean-Charles Mahe says the restaurant's head sommelier, Daniel Wegener, likes to change the "by the glass" list every six weeks.

"He wants people to try wines they're not used to - a Greek wine, a Japanese white wine . . . the aim is to give people the opportunity to try a wine they've never seen before," Mahe says.

Wegener also likes to promote biodynamic and natural wines (those made with minimum intervention) as well as products from small wineries.

Must Wine Bar in Highgate also boasts a stellar reputation with many awards for its wine list.

Paul McArdle is the man responsible. McArdle chooses the wines and writes the accompanying witty notes - not technical as such, but user-friendly.

There's the Argentinian malbec ("if you really want to warm your chilly bones this winter then this is the booze for you"), a Lebanese muscat sauvignon semillon ("seriously good stuff from a unique pocket of the world") and an Italian nebbiolo d'alba ("this appears gentle and soft and then it calmly smacks you in the face with grippy tannins and razor-like acid").

McArdle wants some cutting-edge wines on the by-the-glass list that patrons can't normally purchase. But he also has some mainstream labels so there's "something for everyone."

This list changes totally every five weeks. Sometimes, he might get only a couple of dozen bottles. "It's about being dynamic and interesting," he says.

Now that makes a change from the way things were.