Madam, - I was amazed to read this weekend's review in your "Eating Out" section of the Irish Times Magazine.
Your correspondent visited a restaurant which operates along with a wine shop. She described how one could buy a bottle of wine from the wine shop and "pay just €8.00 corkage".
She described this as a "bounty". Surely not. It is outright exploitation - taking two lots of profit on one bottle in the same premises! This same weekend a UK newspaper reported how so-called up-market restaurants are charging as much as 6 times the retail price on bottles of wine sold to their diners.
Some 30 years ago "BYO (bring your own)" restaurant licences were introduced in Australia.
These allow diners to bring wine with them into a restaurant without being charged corkage. At the time conventional "wine list" restaurant owners forecast doom and the end of civilisation as we all knew it.
As those of your readers who have travelled "down-under" will know, the reverse happened. Australia experienced a revolution in dining out and the birth of "fusion" food which has now spread around much of the rest of the world. Far from being a disaster the BYO licence revitalised dining out and has been a major contributing factor to the spectacular growth of tourism in Australia.
At a time when our own tourism sector is floundering, it may be the moment to stop feeling cravenly grateful for being exploited and to demand proper, honest value. - Yours, etc.
DÓNAL FELLOWS, Douglas Close, Douglas Village East, Cork