Can you take leftover bottles of wine home from restaurants?

While we do that frequently in the US, we don't generally in Europe because we don't have a good place to store the food and second portions are so much smaller that rarely have anything left over. We have never seen a local carrying out a bag of food but we were not looking that hard either. As for wine, we never have anything left. A bottle only has four glasses so you would have to be light drinkers to have any left. Will see what the locals chime in with. In France, once I heard a lady ask for a doggy bag and I think she got the bones from the table in a plastic bag.

I have taken unfinished bottles of wine from restaurant meals with me in both Rome and Sevilla, without sensing any loss of esteem or bad vibes from the proprietors.

Rarer for me to have any food leftover, but on occasion, for example if I'm running behind schedule for a show and I'm paying for the complete formule at lunch, the staff will wrap up the dessert to take away, and do so tastefully/stylishly. (I've had the opposite as well, though, when foolishly choosing a cheap carte at a cheap bistro, where they will not deviate from the plan in any way.)

That said, I do agree that in general, overall, on balance, hedged-one-more-time, the practice of saving your leftovers for later is less common on the Continent than in America.

We've seen patrons take wine home with them occasionally, although we 'respect' wine far too much not to finish it. As for food, Italy passed a law fairly recently to require restaurants to facilitate leftover food to be taken home. We've done it on occasion, and the restaurants were quite accommodating, but it's still not frequently seen.

Thank you! We will be staying in apartments, so will be easily able to drink any extra wine and reheat any leftover food.

There have been rare occasions when I've taken wine back from the restaurant but typically because we're able to linger so long over dinner we leave when the wine has been finished. I also don't foresee much opportunity to take unfinished food away as portions tend to be sensible and if any is left over it's not worth taking home and certainly wouldn't do it any justice reheating it the following day however there won't be any issues with doing either.

Since I usually travel solo, I've had experience. Before ordering a bottle, I ask if I can take it with me. So far, the answer has always been "yes."

short answer is YES for the wine. The food is another story. But, why have wine leftovers anyways?