What Should You Do When There's A Fly In Your Wine?

"Waiter, there's a fly in my soup!" It's a common enough joke setup that it got made fun of in "The Far Side." But what if you don't find a fly in your soup, but somewhere else? Somewhere more expensive and worrisome, like that glass of fine wine you just paid $25 for? Do you pick it out with a spoon? Do you ask the waiter to take your glass back? Do you shatter your glass against the wall and flee the restaurant screaming? (Please don't do that last one.) Whatever you do, don't worry too much about it — while fruit flies are hardly a welcome presence in your wine, any harm they might cause will likely be mitigated by the alcohol in your glass, not to mention the power of your own immune system. But if you want a fresh serving, there's no harm in asking.

First, the bad news: because fruit flies are attracted to decaying things, it's entirely possible that they're carrying some kind of nasty bacteria they picked up in somebody's trash can. Now that those microbes are in your wine, surely it's only a matter of time before you get sick, right? Well, not necessarily. While the alcohol concentration you'll find in your glass of wine won't kill germs, it will probably damage them enough that they're much less likely to cause infection. And even if it gets past the wine, your stomach will (probably) be able to kill the germs with its acid.

But maybe you don't want to risk it. Maybe you're convinced the presence of the fly altered the taste of the wine, or maybe you just hate bugs that much. (Legs may belong in wine, but not spindly little insect legs.) Can you ask the waiter for a new glass of wine to replace it? Well, you can always ask, and your waiter will probably oblige you — especially if you're ordering by the glass. If you order a big, fancy bottle of wine for your table and a fly finds itself in your glass, however, don't expect them to replace the whole bottle. Even the fanciest restaurants aren't made of money, after all, and one discarded bottle of a fine wine could make a big difference in their profit margins.

Really, though, there's little harm in fishing out the offending insect and continuing to enjoy your Cabernet Sauvignon (once you learn how to pronounce it, of course). But if you're in a position where you're dining al fresco and being swarmed by flies, it might be time to politely ask if there are any tables inside.