Did you know that you can bring your own bottle of wine into some restaurants in Washington, D.C., Silver Spring, Arlington, Bethesda and other towns in our area? And that at many of them, you do not have to pay a corkage fee? And others have a corkage fee of only $3-5?

Well, now you know! And you can find the ones nearest your house using the handy-dandy restaurant finder, ReserveYourNight.com, brought to us by those nice Australians at Yellow Tail Reserve wine.

Oh, yes. Not only do those kangaroo loving-vintners bring us drinkable wine for a good price, NOW they’re teaching us how we can pick up a bottle at our local wine store for the same price as the by-the-glass price at the restaurants…and then tote that bottle with us when we go out to dinner. Genius!

So if like me and my husband, you like to have a glass or two of wine when out on a date, but you’d like to save some cash for, I don’t know, paying the sitter, preschool tuition, fixing the leaky roof, COLLEGE, I hope you’ll agree that this online resource is AWESOME.

You can search the BYOB database here, then go to the right-hand navigation and click Washington DC/Baltimore, and then enter your zipcode, proximity to your area, the amount you’re willing to spend on corkage fees and other search criteria.

Here are some area restaurants that according to ReserveYourNight.com, allow you to BYOB with no corkage fee. (Note: I called to verify all of these places and spoke with the managers, but I also spoke to some places listed at ReserveYourNight.com with a staff member who answered was not sure about the restaurant policy or their liquor license has changed. So I would call the places you find via search at ReserveYourNight before you BYOB that box of Franzia.)

I also found some fabulous-looking restaurants with corkage fees listed at $3, $5 and fancy-schmancy ones with a $10 corkage fee that would be completely worth it (you know, places with by-the-bottle prices of no less than $30).

But these places below?  I called them myself and the owners said to bring it on, and bring it in FOR FREE!