Wine much?

Having dinner at a restaurant with a friend last night, we found ourselves discussing the merits of pouring a single serving of wine from a miniature carafe.

Does it give the wine a better chance to breathe on its short trip from bottle to table? Maybe small carafes serve to satisfy customers they're getting the expected amount of wine when a large glass makes any serving size seem smaller. Or is it a wasteful practice - an unnecessary step requiring extra labour; an extra dish to wash?

If it's the breathing thing, well, you can get special wine spouts that fit into the bottle and breathe into the wine while you pour. If it's to assuage customers' sense of fair value, they should know that the bigger the glass, the smaller the portion appears. And if not, too bad...we're talking water conservation here; preserving the environment. Which brings me to the third possibility.

Hello! Duh! Yes, this miniature carafe is the tool of a wasteful practice. In this day and age, all companies should recognize the value in the small steps they can take that 1) Are environmentally friendly and can be leveraged as such in ad campaigns and 2) save them money. It's kinda like a win-win.