You should always order the wines you’ve never heard of — here’s why

Bosker left a job as a journalist a few years ago to join an elite class of wine experts known as sommeliers. She chronicles her epic and often tormenting quest in her book, which is full of tidbits about how the mysterious world of wine works. (Full disclosure: I worked with Bosker when I was an editor at The Huffington Post.)

According to Bosker, who worked as a “cellar rat” at New York’s L’Apicio restaurant, you’ll pay a so-called gimme tax if you order wines that look more approachable.

“Savvy beverage directors levied a ‘gimme tax’ on glasses of brand-name grapes like chardonnay and malbec,” she writes. “They could charge more because most drinkers see a familiar grape, go on autopilot, and think, ‘Give it to me; I don’t care what it costs.'”

“‘Cabernet’ was somm-speak for ‘easy money,'” she continues, alluding to the “golden rule” of sommeliers: “You can’t make margin on s— people don’t know.”

This blew my mind. Not only do I overpay for the most familiar wines, I also probably overlook good deals on wines no one has ever heard of, according to Bosker.

She offers some advice on how to avoid paying this premium.

“When I went out to eat, I started steering clear of the classic crowd-pleasers,” she writes. “For a shot at drinking great wine for good value, I stuck to whatever looked unfamiliar and vaguely intimidating — say, a mondeuse noire from the Savoie in France.”