I love eating in restaurants. I love the interesting menus. I love the people watching. I love the buzz. It’s like being in a movie and watching it at the same time…with good snacks that I didn’t have to make.

Most of the time when I eat out, I like a good glass of wine with my food. Wine is so food friendly. It’s usually tasty, refreshing and quaffable. It’s better than Diet Coke or iced tea or coffee, especially with food. Diet Coke numbs your taste buds, iced tea is often weak and flavorless, and coffee is only good with breakfast. In general, I’d like my lunch and dinner wine to be nothing fancy or expensive, and no big deal. So I’ve been wondering lately, why is that so hard to achieve in restaurants?

My experience is that restaurant wine is either over-hyped and expensive or hardly thought of, and not worth it.

Many times, I do like splurging on a great glass of pinot noir for $10, but not every time I eat out. A $6 chardonnay is overkill with an $8 hamburger.

If American consumers are now routinely buying excellent $6-12 bottles of wine at the grocery store, why should we have to spend six dollars or more when we want a glass of wine with lunch or dinner in a decent restaurant? I think restaurateurs are missing an opportunity here.

Restaurateurs: Offer me a decent, well-priced red and white house wine. Tell your wine distributors you want to taste a bunch of good value wines. Pick out a couple you and your staff like a lot, and then buy enough of it to get a good wholesale discount so you can offer it to me for a great price. Promote it as your “specially selected house wine,” be sure your staff has tasted it and knows how to describe it, and then sell it like crazy—for less than $5 a glass. You’ll make money and I bet some new customers, too.