One of the meals of my life was at Tetsuya’s where you could bring your own bottle, free of charge, to the eponymous cook’s restaurant reached through a hole in the wall in a Sydney suburb. Raiding their cellars, my hosts handed their bottles to the waiter and the wines were served as unsnootily as if thoughtfully selected by the restaurant itself. Occasionally you come across attempts to replicate the Antipodean BYO culture here. Hullabaloos was a BYO chain, but it sold up, leaving a sole survivor to represent the culture, The Muset in Clifton, Bristol.

Bring your own

BYO is a sub-culture in this country, tolerated rather than encouraged, but you might be surprised at the number around. I’m a fan of some of the places listed on Tom Cannavan’s website at http://www.wine-pages.com/food/byoblist.shtml, among them, Amaranth Thai Market in Earlsfield, Mirch Masala in Tooting, Miraggio at Fulham Broadway and New Tayyab in Whitechapel. Don’t expect Michelin-starred cooking (although Tayyab is particularly enjoyable). As an opportunity to take a few nice bottles though and come away with a full stomach and a light bill in equally satisfying measures, it’s a great way to eat out on a budget.

The main reason BYO isn’t bigger is because it undermines the gross profit margin that most restaurants apply to their wines. Between 60 per cent and 75 per cent is standard. That’s from two and a half to four times what the wine cost the restaurant. The fact is that the wine list essentially subsidises everything else. ‘The costs of the kitchen are higher, so the profit contributor on non-food items such as spirits, water, coffee and wine are higher and of these, wine is the highest’, says Nigel Platts-Martin, one of London’s top restaurant wine buyers. If you accept that as the inevitable quid pro quo of enjoying a good meal out, it only becomes a rip-off when the restaurant ends up greedier than the customer.

Keen to encourage custom without downgrading and offering lunch for £10, ‘the route to failure’, as he puts it, Roger Jones of the award-winning Harrow at Little Bedwyn, is justifiably reluctant to do the restaurant equivalent of a Ratners. ‘The car showrooms on Park Lane have not removed the Aston Martins and replaced them with Ford Mondeo’, says Jones. Instead he is offering free corkage to guests opting for his Gourmet Tasting Menu on a Wednesday, Thursday or Friday lunch or dinner.

Catena's Alejandro Sejanovich brings his own to the Adrianna Vineyard, Argentina

No doubt more restaurants could do more to bring customers in with better deals on wine, such as free or minimal corkage, a free glass, or a discount on wines on a quiet day of the week. Corkage is still one of the best-kept secrets of the wine trade. At a Carluccio’s recently, I accidentally discovered that you can order one of the superior bottles in their retail front-of-house to have with your meal for just an extra £5. It’s policy, but the MD told me ‘it’s one of our best-kept secrets – until now!’ The Tate’s publicity for its £3 for a glass of wine or £5 for two at lunch is the exception that proves the rule.

Many top restaurants will discreetly offer corkage of £10 - £20 as an incentive to loyal customers wanting to bring in a special bottle, but the uptake is surprisingly small. When one top London eatery hooked up with a fine wine merchant to offer £10 corkage to its deep-cellared clientèle in January, the uptake was so minimal as to be barely worth the effort. ‘Nominal corkage tampers with the business model which is dangerous’, says Platts-Martin. ‘I don’t want the whole world bringing in a bottle of muscadet to save money’. Save your muscadet for picnics then and keep your Château Latour for drinking free, apart from the purchase price of course.

Something For the Weekend

Under a Fiver

2006 Tesco Finest Piwen Chardonnay, Casablanca Valley. Fresh tropical, juicy pineappley fruit with the crisp, unoaked New World meets Chablis-like character of cool climate Casablanca on the Pacific. The last week (until Wednesday) for making the most of the half-price offer. £3.99, down from £7.99, Tesco.

Under a Tenner.

2007 Domaine du Petit Chêne Moulin-à-Vent. Serious beaujolais may sound like a contradiction in terms but proof that there’s life beyond nouveau comes in the form of this vibrantly moreish red, which adds a light touch of oak, for backbone and complexity, to the vivid cherry and strawberry qualities of the gamay grape. £9.99, Marks & Spencer.

Splash Out

2007 St.Aubin 1er cru, Gérard Thomas. From a fine vintage for white burgundy, this is classic, well-crafted chardonnay whose richness of flavour is enhanced by the oatmealy complexity of the stirred lees while fresh acidity delivers a racy dimension of elegant mouthwatering crispness. £14.99, on special offer, last day today, down from £15.99, Majestic.