What does corkage mean?
Corkage is a noun referring chiefly to a fee that a restaurant, club, or other licensed establishment charges when a guest brings their own bottle of wine rather than ordering from the house list. The charge compensates the venue for the service involved — chilling, opening, and pouring the wine, providing glassware, and forgoing the substantial markup it would otherwise earn on alcohol. In everyday use, the word almost always appears as part of the phrase 'corkage fee,' as in 'the restaurant waives corkage on weeknights.' A secondary, now-rare sense refers simply to cork material or the supply of corks. Corkage is most familiar in North American dining culture, where bring-your-own-bottle policies and associated fees are common, though the practice exists elsewhere under different names. The term derives from 'cork,' the bark of the cork oak long used to seal wine bottles.
A fee charged by a restaurant or similar establishment for opening and serving wine brought by the customer.
"We brought a special bottle for our anniversary and gladly paid the corkage."
Almost always used attributively in the fixed phrase 'corkage fee'.
Cork material, or the amount or supply of corks.
"The old ledger recorded purchases of corkage for the bottling season."
This sense is dated and rare in modern usage.
The plural is rare because corkage usually refers to an uncountable fee or material; when pluralized it typically refers to multiple individual corkage fees.
"The restaurant's corkages vary depending on the size of the party."
That $30 'corkage fee' exists because restaurants make their real money on wine markup — bring your own bottle and you're cutting into their core profit.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Etymology of corkage
Corkage was formed in English from 'cork,' the word for the buoyant bark of the cork oak used to stopper bottles, combined with the noun-forming suffix '-age.' The underlying word 'cork' entered English in the early fourteenth century, likely via Middle Dutch or Low German 'kurk' from Spanish 'alcorque,' which itself traces back through Arabic to Latin 'quercus,' meaning oak. The '-age' suffix, borrowed from Old French, denotes a charge or collective quantity, giving corkage its dual historical senses of a fee and cork material.
How corkage is actually used
Most often encountered in the phrase 'corkage fee' in North American dining contexts. In some jurisdictions, restaurants without a liquor license may legally allow BYO wine and charge corkage. The word carries no strong connotation — it's neutral commercial vocabulary — though high corkage fees are sometimes criticized by diners.
Easily confused with corkage
'Stoppage' means an interruption or blockage, whereas 'corkage' is a fee for serving a customer's own wine — they rhyme but are unrelated in meaning.