Design
How to design a wine list for a restaurant
Design a restaurant wine list with a length, a price ladder, and an order that follows the food. Method, not a blank template. For UK venues.
Written by Marco Azzari on
Wine list design is the job of turning a pile of bottles into a page a guest can choose from in under a minute, and a server can sell without a lecture. If you searched for a template or a PDF, you are in the right place for the method. You are in the wrong place for a blank Word file with grape icons.
This is written for restaurants, pubs, bars, and hotels in the UK that already have a list. Guests googling a specific room's wine list should leave. The operator should stay.
A list is not a catalogue
A catalogue is what a wholesaler prints: everything they can sell you, grouped the way their warehouse is grouped. A list is what this room needs against this food, at prices that survive 20% VAT and a phone on the table.
Four decisions, in order:
- Length. How many lines can this floor explain and this cellar turn? How many wines belong on a list is the dedicated page. The design rule is simple: if a line cannot be poured, described, or sold by the people you have tonight, it is storage, not a list.
- Ladder. Prices should spread. A clump around £30 is one wine in the guest's head. They pick at random, or they pick the name they know.
- The second-cheapest slot. Volume often lands there because guests will not take the cheapest and will not decide. If you did not choose that wine, the guest did your buying for you. Details: wine-list psychology.
- Order. Follow how people eat here, not the wholesaler's chapters. Colour-then-country is a filing system. A guest is holding a plate in their head.
What the page should look like (without becoming a brochure)
Each line needs a name a human can say, glass prices for the 125 ml and 175 ml when you actually pour it, a bottle price, and one short clause if the name is opaque. Vintage if it matters to the wine you are selling; fake precision on a house pour is theatre.
Do not write tasting notes. "Notes of crushed gravel" does not move a bottle at half eight on a Saturday. See how to write a wine line.
Sections: keep them few. House / glass, then wines that sit with the food you actually serve, then a short "if you want to spend" band if the room has that guest. A twelve-section list is a textbook.
Print, iPad, QR
The surface matters less than whether tonight's 86s and prices are true. Printed versus digital covers the trade-off. A leather book with sticker prices from last year is a design failure, not a tradition.
Do this on the list you have
You rarely need a new order to redesign the page. Start with three plates that go out every night and the wines already in the cellar that sit with them. Move the second-cheapest slot onto a wine whose true cost you have just recalculated. Cut two lines nobody can describe. That is a design pass. Choosing wines without a sommelier is the selection half. Pricing the wine list is the number half.
A template cannot do those three things, because it does not know your menu.
If you want this done on the list you already have, rather than as a method on a wiki page, Wine CFO runs a free Wine List Checkup. Independent. No cellar to empty. Capacity is limited because it is done by a person.
About the author
Marco Azzari
Founder of Wine CFO · Wine List Engineer for UK restaurants
I help restaurants, hotels and bars across the UK earn more from the wine they already sell. I price lists wine by wine, cost by-the-glass programmes on their real yield, rebuild selections around the food menu, and rewrite lines so guests understand what they're ordering. Every Wine Profit Checkup goes across my desk personally.
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