A bottle on a restaurant list costs a multiple of what the same wine costs in a shop, and the multiple is rarely constant from the cheapest bottle to the most expensive. The pattern comes from how a cellar is financed rather than from what is in the glass.
The bottle is bought long before anyone orders it
Wine has to be purchased, delivered and stored before a single glass is sold, which means a list is money sitting still. A deep cellar is stock that may not move for months.
That capital cost grows with the age and rarity of what is being held. The markup is paying for the wait as much as for the pour itself.
Glassware, temperature-controlled storage, breakage and staff who can describe what they are selling all attach to the same bottle. None of those appears as a separate line on the bill.
Markups shrink as the bottle gets more expensive
Inexpensive bottles usually carry the steepest multiple and costly ones the shallowest. What a restaurant protects is the cash margin per bottle, not the ratio.
A modest markup on an expensive wine still returns more money than an aggressive one on a cheap wine. Buyers at the top of a list also compare prices closely, which caps how far it can be pushed.
The result is a curve rather than a flat percentage. It is why the best value on many lists sits a step or two above the entry level rather than at it.
Wine by the glass carries the spoilage risk
An opened bottle begins oxidising immediately, and whatever does not sell within a few days becomes waste. A glass price has to assume some of the bottle will never be poured.
Preservation systems that blanket the wine with inert gas slow that loss but cost money to buy and run. Either way the risk ends up inside the glass price.
Which is why a handful of pours often recovers the whole bottle, and why by-the-glass selections stay short and change slowly compared with the bottle list.
Distribution decides what can appear at all
Restaurants buy through wholesalers rather than at retail, and in many places the layers between producer and buyer are set by rules that vary considerably by jurisdiction.
A wine with no importer or no local distributor cannot be listed no matter how much a sommelier wants it. Availability, not preference, shapes a large part of any list.
Smaller producers reach fewer markets, so lists in major cities look broader than lists elsewhere for reasons that have nothing to do with the kitchen.
The list subsidises the rest of the menu
Beverage margins are steadier than food margins, because a bottle needs no prep labour, generates no trim waste and spoils slowly while sealed.
Kitchens working with volatile ingredient costs lean on that stability to hold the overall margin. Food can then be priced closer to its true cost.
It also explains why a wine-led dining room and a food-led one feel differently priced even when the cooking is comparable.