ALTHOUGH I'LL ADMIT I'm particularly (perhaps even preternaturally) sensitive to restaurant wine prices, it seems as if they've gone up a lot lately—even more than they have in retail wine shops. Are restaurant wine directors actually paying more for their wines, or are they just taking higher markups? According to Chuck Ellis, president of the Newton, Mass.-based research group Restaurant Sciences, it's actually a bit of both.

Restaurant wine prices for the same wines are definitely higher overall, said Mr. Ellis in a...