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Walk around the wine department of a British supermarket and you'll find as exciting a retail environment as anywhere in the world. Read a British wine list, however, and you'll probably be disappointed at what you find.

Wine in the on-trade - certainly outside London - still doesn't reflect the revolution that has taken place in the off-trade in the past 10 years. While supermarkets have recognised their customers' desire for novelty and willingness to experiment, too many lists still reflect the outdated belief that customers expect to drink French when they eat out.

With certain exceptions, the continuing resistance to selling wine by the glass is baffling. The same old excuses get trotted out: preservation systems are not reliable; you can't rely on staff to use them properly; it results in wastage; people identify wine by the glass with cheap wines; and it stops people buying by the bottle. I've heard them all.

In fact, all the evidence from wine-by-the-glass pioneers such as John Gilchrist of London's 1837 restaurant, Henry Chebaane of the Hempel Group and John Hoskins of Cambridgeshire chain Huntsbridge, is that it does increase the average spend on wine.

Restaurants have many opportunities to interest customers in wines that aren't open to supermarkets and to pick up quickly on trends. If you have a 400-strong wine selection it looks a bit odd to list, say, two Austrian or Greek wines. On a list of 40 it's much easier, particularly if they're grouped by style.

It should, in theory, be much easier to sell wines or grape varieties with unfamiliar names because there is someone on hand to explain what they are. There's more room on a wine list or, indeed, a restaurant table, to write about wines than on a supermarket shelf.

The reason usually put forward for not listing more unusual wines is that people always order the same thing. The answer is to persuade them not to and there seem to be two obvious ways of doing this. One is to give people the opportunity to try wines they don't know, which you can achieve if you allow small pours or tasting flights. The other is to offer people a good deal.

When supermarkets introduce new lines they generally discount them by at least 20%. Wine in restaurants which would normally be listed at, say, £14.99 could be offered for £12 as an introductory offer, six-for-the-price-of-five deal on certain bins for large parties or a free glass on main courses over £15?

Restaurants tend to both overestimate and underestimate what the public knows. Certainly, new grape varieties such as Verdelho or Viognier need explanation - or at least a pronunciation guide. And helpful would be a cross-reference to wines customers already know (If you like "x", you'll love "y"). But restaurateurs miss a trick by not building on interest that's already there. Take the success of Australian wines, for example. Why not start focusing on individual regions such as the Barossa or Western Australia and get people to trade up? Food-and-wine matching is also a powerful marketing tool that supermarkets don't have at their disposal. But the mistake many restaurants tend to make is to pair unfamiliar wines with unfamiliar dishes. If you want to persuade people to try a new wine, pair it with the most popular dish on your menu.

Information point

There are still remarkably few restaurants giving wine recommendations with each dish. Some people believe it implies there is only one right choice and it stops customers ordering other wines on the list. I suspect, however, that they more often give up in bewilderment and order the house wine.

But what should you be buying to stay one jump ahead? At the lower end of the price scale, if Argentina isn't a major feature on your list, it should be. Southern Italy, Sicily and the Languedoc are currently offering great value, particularly for reds. The same goes for Portugal, which is seriously underrated. Spain, too, is often seen simply as a source of Rioja.

Some areas are represented by the wrong kind of wines. Californian selections tend to be dominated by overoaked Chardonnays or overpriced Cabernets, instead of the more enticing Zinfandel or exciting wines of the central coast. Premium growing areas such as the North-west Pacific and Austria are under-represented.

You also have an opportunity to feature wines that Tesco and Sainsbury's basically aren't interested in, such as high-quality German wines, or wines from Alsace or Greece.

The best piece of advice I ever heard was from Californian wine consultant Evan Goldstein. "The best way to sell a wine," he told me, "is to say, ‘This wine is GREAT.'" I couldn't put it better myself. n

Fiona Beckett's new book Eating and Drinking: An A-Z of great Food and Drink Combinations is published this month by Mitchell Beazley, price £7.99