If you’ve ever wondered how restaurants can justify charging more than $40 for a wine that you just bought in a tasting room for $20, the answer is fairly simple albeit hard to swallow.

The markup helps restaurants cover their overhead costs, especially those related to the wine. It pays for the salary of a sommelier (so make sure you use his services), some of the salaries of the wait staff, spoilage of wine (by some estimates about 5 percent of all restaurant wines spoil before being opened), the cost of storing wine (wine cellars cost a lot of money), and all sorts of other costs of doing business, from the electricity bill to broken wine glasses that can cost a restaurant thousands of dollars a year to replace.

In general, cheap wines have higher markups than expensive wines. Those from well-known regions or made from popular grape varietals also tend to have higher markups because they’re guaranteed sellers. The pricing ploys can be cynical but there is a way to beat them.

One way to save money on wine in restaurants is to bring your own. Corkage fees (the fee charged by the restaurant for you to bring and open your own wine) vary but are generally about $15-25 in Wine Country restaurants. It sounds pricey but is worth considering if you plan to drink an expensive wine. Some places offer free corkage on certain days of the week, however, and many others offer free corkage on one bottle of your own wine for every bottle you buy from their wine list. Ask about the corkage policy of the restaurant when making a reservation.

Having ordered a bottle in a restaurant there is yet another wine ritual to go through. The smelling and tasting ritual is all about finding those wines you like; this restaurant ritual is all about finding those wines that you don’t want to drink.

When a server brings a bottle of wine to the table and shows it to you like some trophy, double-check that it is in fact the wine you ordered. Take note of the vintage because it’s not uncommon for a restaurant to sell out of one vintage and replace it with another without updating the wine list.

When the wine is opened, the cork will often be handed to you or placed gingerly on the table. It might make a nice souvenir but is actually given to you to check whether it’s in good condition. A good cork should feel springy and soft. A dried out and hard cork suggests that the wine was not stored well and should be a warning to pay close attention when you taste the wine. Don’t bother smelling the cork--it will generally just smell of damp cork, after all. And don’t bother doing anything at all with synthetic corks, other than perhaps bouncing them off the ceiling for fun.

Finally, the server will pour a tasting-room quantity of wine into your glass. The idea is to check that the wine is the right temperature and that it is not oxidized or corked. If you simply don’t like it, you’re stuck with it, though many wines will sometimes taste a bit rough when first opened. Always give the wine a few minutes in the glass before drinking to let it breathe and start to reveal its full range of aromas and tastes.

One more thign to check is the wine's temperature. White wines tend to come adequately chilled but red wines can sometimes feel like they have been stored above a hot oven in the kitchen (and in some cases they might well have been). Unless you want to drink something as warm as mulled wine don;t be afraid to ask for an ice bucket to cool the bottle down. After all, red wine is generally best drunk at 60<\#208>70°F, not 85°F.