I always passed by Cav Wine Shop every time I'd go to Bonifacio High Street, and I always wanted to try it but I never did. That is, up until the Friday night. My friends and I wanted to try a wine bar so I suggested Cav. It looks like a pretty expensive place and we didn't want a big spending night, so I decided to drop my friends off first so they could take a look at the menu while I waited outside in car. They decided the menu seemed reasonable so I parked my car and followed them.
One major downer - the corkage! There were a lot of wine bottles that cost under P600 which made my friends decide that Cav was worth trying, but if you order a wine bottle under P1,500 and drink it in the restaurant, you have to pay a corkage fee of P300. It's written in the fine print at the bottom of each page of the wine list so my friends didn't notice it when looking at the menu and deciding that we hang out there, but at least the waiter informed us about the corkage before ordering. It momentarily doused our enthusiasm and so we decided to stick to the cheaper wines (I was looking at a more expensive bottle initially). In any case, I figured that a bottle of wine in most places costs about P700-800 or more, so we didn't pay more than what we would've spent if we ate somewhere else.
The thing that made my night, however, was the Cav card and the "wine vendo machine" (that's not the actual name - I'm just calling it that lol). The system: the wine vendo has a pretty good selection of red and white wines and you can get a taste, a half-glass, or a full glass of any of these wines. You slot your card into the machine, put your glass under the wine you have chosen, select the amount you want to have, and press the button. The card automatically gets credited and you have your wine. You pay for the total amount credited to the Cav card once you ask for the bill.
If you decide to get just a taste, it can cost as low as P35 although it really is just a few sips. However, this system worked perfectly for me because I wanted to try a lot of different wines. Even the more expensive wines that cost around P1400++ per bottle had tasting options that cost about P80-90.
One of my favorites was the Belnero Castelo Banfi Sangiovese 2006, but it was a bit too pricey for my wallet (P80 per tasting). My other favorite that night was the Salmon Creek Pinot Noir 2008 from California, and it turned out that a bottled of the Salmon Creek was "only" P660. I enjoyed it so much and thought it was priced decently that I decided I would bring a bottle of it home with me.
I ended up tasting about 6 or 7 more different wines, some of them good, some of them great, and one of them tasting awful LOL (I absolutely hated the Errazuriz Chardonnay 2009! Thank God I had only a few sips of it LOL). Add to this the bottle I got for myself, the two bottles my friends and I shared there, and the salpicao I ordered (it tasted so good with the red wine! LOL) and it's not surprising that my tab that night was really high!! I have been working my ass off the last few weeks, though, so I can consider this to be my prize to myself haha. My friends in fact said it was so nice to see me enjoying myself a lot, like a kid in a candy store LOL.
While I would rather they didn't have that whole corkage thing, there are still enough relatively inexpensive wines in the menu. And the Cav card set-up is, for me, worth trying again. I will have to save up for another trip here, and maybe I need to eat a lot before going there so I won't have to order any food from the menu, but I would certainly like to pay Cav another visit.
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