TERROIR
THE FEATURE
The Wine Flight Decoded: How Restaurants Use Three-Glass Tastings To Sell Education
The wine flight has been treated as a leftover on most restaurant lists, a sampler tucked under the by-the-glass page. Sommelier Business calls it the opposite: not a tasting, but "a journey, telling a story, and providing an interactive experience that engages the senses and educates." A flight built around a single theme, whether same producer across three vintages or same grape across three soils, is a sommelier’s argument made portable.
Master Sommelier Peter Granoff describes the operator economics directly. At his restaurant’s Flight Nights, "those who order the flight usually get 15% off the retail purchase of the featured wines that evening." The flight stops being a beverage line and becomes the top of a sales funnel—three glasses, one thesis, the diner walks out with the bottle.
THE DISPATCH
Latest from this week
Napa Issues Urgent Alert After Glassy-Winged Sharpshooter Found on Costco Grapevines
The Napa County Agricultural Commissioner’s Office issued an urgent alert on May 26 after detecting the glassy-winged sharpshooter, the vector of grapevine-killing Pierce’s disease, on grapevines shipped from Burchell Nursery in Fresno to a Napa Costco. Of 220 plants delivered between April 21 and May 26, 63 have been destroyed and one egg mass found; 157 remain unaccounted for, with parallel shipments to Sonoma, Marin, Solano, and Yolo counties. A Costco garden-center channel is a fresh hole in California’s biosecurity perimeter.
London Wine Fair Opens with Largest-Ever UK Producer Showcase
London Wine Fair opened its 45th edition at Olympia London on May 18, running through May 20, with organisers expecting more than 500 exhibitors and 10,000+ visitors across 13,000 wines on show. The inaugural Host Nation initiative spotlights British drinks—more than 100 UK producers in the largest English-wine presence in the show’s 45-year history, almost a five-fold jump on 2025. The signal: English sparkling and still wines have moved, in the trade’s own staging, from curiosity to category.
THE PICK
JEAN FOILLARD MORGON CÔTE DU PY 2022
Jean Foillard is one of Beaujolais’s Gang of Four, the cohort of producers who in the 1980s turned away from chaptalisation and commercial yeasts to follow Jules Chauvet, the oenologist Wikipedia credits with inspiring the natural-wine movement. Foillard’s parcel sits on the Côte du Py, the granite slope outside Villié-Morgon that his importer Kermit Lynch calls "the pride of Morgon." Carbonic-macerated Gamay, native yeasts, low sulfur—the Beaujolais method in one bottle.
Neal Martin gave the 2022 vintage 93 points at Vinous, calling it "medium-bodied with fine tannins" and pointing readers to a 2027-2037 drinking window. That cellar-back call is the operator’s cue: this is a cru that gains from a few years in bottle. Pair with duck confit or a charcuterie board. About $65 retail.
Until next Thursday,
The editors of TERROIR