How to price a wine list in Italy (true cost, IVA included)

Written by Marco Azzari on 3 October 2026

If your wine prices were set from memory, inherited, or multiplied by a round ricarico that felt fair, you do not know your margin. You have a guess with a euro sign. This page is the owner version: three lines, true cost, IVA included, before anyone redesigns the whole carta dei vini.

What "true cost" means here

Start from what you pay the supplier for the bottle (the net you actually pay, after the discount you really get, not the listino you never received).

Then put IVA in the costing the way it sits in the sale. In Italian restaurant service (somministrazione), food and wine both go out at 10%. A sealed bottle you sell to take away is a retail sale at 22%. Do not build a wine price on the story that "wine is taxed more than food" at the table. That story is wrong for consumption in the room, and a commercialista will catch it. Full split: restaurant VAT.

Menu prices are shown IVA included, so the 10% sits inside the number the guest reads. If the price on the list was built years ago and never had 10% taken out of the thinking, the leak is silent. The guest still sees a number. The house keeps less than the owner believes. The coperto pays for bread and linen; it does not rescue an underpriced wine.

Do three lines before you do thirty

Pick:

1. House wine (the pour when nobody chooses).
2. The glass that actually sells.
3. The bottle that actually sells.

For each one, write on a scrap of paper: supplier cost, true cost after IVA logic, current selling price, what is left. If you cannot do it for three lines, you will not do it for the list.

You are looking for two failure modes:

• Priced to empty the room. Famous label, fat ricarico, guest checks Vivino, bottle sits.
• Priced to empty the till. House quartino still at 2019, volume high, contribution embarrassing.

Most independent lists have both, on different rows. Raising everything is how you get only the first problem. See phone-check markup.

Glasses are not bottles

A flat "×3 on the bottle, divide by six for the calice" treats waste, tax, and mix as a vibe. By the glass, done honestly, is often the best contribution in the house. Done lazily, it is where you give wine away and call it hospitality. Dedicated page: price wine by the glass. House as its own problem: price house wine.

Markup is a tool, not a method

A ricarico is a shortcut. Contribution per glass and per bottle is the thing you can defend in a bad month. If you need the translation layer for a review meeting, use markup versus contribution margin.

When the three lines are honest, you can decide whether the rest of the list is a weekend job or a conversation with someone who will do it on your actual bottles. The wiki stops at the method.