The Wine List at Restaurant Gougé

Welcome to Restaurant Gougé (please, we prefer that you pronounce it Goo-zhay) and our Wine Spectator Finest of Top of Best of Ludicrous Award of Excellence Wine List. We are honored to have been allowed to pay $75 dollars to Wine Spectator so that some junior member of their editorial team who normally places wine bottles in brown bags, being careful to be certain the foil gives the important wines away, would approve of our list, a list that was carefully curated from the most highly overrated and obscure wines on the planet. Our award-winning sommelier, Rajat Anosmia MS, MW, M&M MJB, MP, MFer, guarantees that no matter which wine you select to accompany your meal this evening, it is unlikely you will ever remember what it is, or even want to. This is part of your Gougé experience.

Our sommelier has made every effort to ensure that the wines are complementary to the outstanding cuisine of Chef Juan Toque Oberdelein. However, the deciding factor in choosing the list is, as one would expect from a top sommelier, ego. Rajat Anosmia WSET, WKRP, WTF is widely regarded among the wine elite of the world as having the greatest palate since the late Robert Parker, combined with the nose of a bloodhound. This would explain the ticks. If you have any questions about the wines on the list, please ask our highly trained wait staff; Rajat may be on the trail of a criminal. Our wait staff has tried most of the wines on our wine list, primarily from wine left behind in unfinished bottles. They will be happy to point you in the proper direction when selecting a wine, keeping in mind the ultimate importance of their gratuity.

We understand that most of the wines on our James Beard Award Should Have Been Nominated wine list will be unfamiliar to most of our customers. This is strictly intentional. Our standard wine list markup is much easier to swallow if our guests are unfamiliar with the retail prices of the wines. You will find that each wine is accompanied by a brief description. Here it is:

“From a rare variety and an artisan producer, this is a wine worth nearly half its price.”

We pride ourselves that, unlike the vintages, our prices are always accurate and up-to-date.

Much like our award-winning sommelier on one of his usual junkets, our wine glasses are handblown. Yours may not be, but ours certainly are. We are happy to provide fine crystal stemware upon request, though only for wines with triple-digit prices starting with 5. We feel that our wines are crafted by the finest producers from all over the world who regularly taste them in cheap stemware. If it’s good enough for them, we feel it’s good enough for our guests.

Please expect delays of up to twenty minutes after you order wine. Our Certified Sanctified Sissified sommelier insists that our servers take a few extra minutes to worship each bottle he’s chosen for the list and express their gratitude for his wisdom, guidance, and mere existence. This should give the women in your party the time they need to prepare for the wine by applying lipstick. If you would like your wine decanted, we are happy to do so, but don’t blow out the fucking candle like an asshole.

Our wines are priced completely randomly with markups aimed at making you order a lesser wine you don’t really want, or at moving a wine that is essentially past its prime. This just seems like fun to us. The wines at Restaurant Gougé are also stored throughout the restaurant at completely random and fluctuating temperatures. Temperature-controlled wine cellars contribute significantly to climate change which is ruining many of the great vineyards of the world, none of which is represented on our list, but we care, dammit, we’re Restaurant Gougé! We are honored that Michelin saw fit to ignore their usual Stars and award us their rare and coveted Two Black Holes. Both have dined here.

We do have a generous corkage policy if you wish to bring your own celebratory wine to Restaurant Gougé. For each bottle of wine you bring to the restaurant we simply ask that you buy three extra entrées in order to satisfy the ungrateful pig that you are.

We do have a large list of Wines By-the-Glass. These wines are carefully selected by our Sommelier of the Year (Kazakhstan) from the greatest importers in the world’s closeouts. In addition, we are happy to pour you a glass of anything from our extensive wine list for no more than the price of the bottle.

And, finally, Restaurant Gougé believes that comfort has no place in the dining experience. In pursuit of excellence, our tables are close together, our chairs could give Mike and Molly hemorrhoids, our wooden floors and ceilings magnify the noise level, our menu choices are esoteric and inexplicably described, and our wine list obscure and baffling.

Bon Appétit!