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How to avoid getting gouged on wine at restaurants

If you’ve ever glanced at a restaurant wine list, you know adding a bottle of red or white can inflate your bill pretty quickly. You may be left wondering how you can buy an entire bottle of Merlot at the state store for under $15, but a single glass is going to run you the same price at a mid-range restaurant. Of course, we expect there will be a markup on any type of alcohol, but why so high with wine? Sommelier Mark Oldman clues us in. In his book “How to Drink Like a Billionaire,” Oldman writes that the typical restaurant will markup a bottle of wine at least 200 percent, so that $15 brand you’re familiar with, quickly becomes a $45 bottle  — or in extreme cases, even 400 percent with a $75 price tag. “The need to cover glassware, staff wages, rent, inventory — the reasons are sundry for why wine is marked…