Best Wine List: One of the Best Reads Around, From Start to Finish

If your evening plans include dining with a wine enthusiast at a new restaurant, you may consider bringing along some reading material, because if the place has any vinous aspirations whatsoever, you could lose your companion for an hour or so after the wine list has been dropped off. Many of us just take the time to select which wine we want from the list. But some of us read the list like others might, say, read a new Michael Crichton thriller: from start to finish. A list should make sense, just as we expect complete sentences from our published novelists. Now that I date someone in the wine trade, a woman who’s more knowledgeable than I am, we just make sure to ask for two wine lists when we sit down, so that I have something to do as she pores over the pages like a rabbi pores over the Talmud. With a 30-page wine list that is well worth study and devotion, Riddle’s Penultimate Café and Wine Bar is a temple to wine, as you readers have acknowledged by voting it best wine list. Owner Andy Ayers has put together quite a document. I asked him how he would judge his own wine list and he said, “Well, it’s good but it has a few flaws.” What, pray tell, are the holes in the list? “Obviously, we’re lacking in wines from the Southern Hemisphere,” he said. “But we’re in the process of correcting that.” I give him credit for the frank assessment. Even if there’s not a lengthy Argentine section, there’s still plenty to draw from. So how does one judge a wine list? Circumspectly, I think, is the answer. A great wine list really does need to be all things to all diners, satisfying all comers from the wealthy to the less so and the sophisticated to the beginner. It should have some riveting choices and some familiar and approachable ones. But, first and foremost, it should go with the food. Nothing is more annoying to me than to dine out and find a wine list full of respectable choices, none of which has anything to do with the cuisine being served. Any Asian restaurant that wants to feature wine and doesn’t have Riesling as an option is a joke. Same with an authentic tapas restaurant that doesn’t have at least a sherry or two. Wine lists that are dumb to their restaurants’ cuisines are written in this way for one of two reasons. The first is incompetence and the second is arrogance. The first speaks for itself, but the second gets at an issue of which you should be aware. Sommeliers can often become rather solipsistic, seeing their wine program as its own little universe, divorced from the rest of the world (which doesn’t happen to exist for them anyway). The intended audience for this kind of list (and I do mean audience) is other sommeliers, not the restaurant’s customers. Of course, price is another consideration. Now, I’m not going to get into a discussion of the outrageousness of restaurant wine prices. (My feeling is that a two-times markup from retail is usually sufficient; three is too high.) Let’s just say that good wine service is a built-in cost at a nice restaurant and adds to the price of wine. Also, at these places, wine actually subsidizes the food. Your $80 bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon is paying for that $22 rib eye, which should in fact be much more expensive, given parts and labor. A good restaurant wine list will have good selections at all price levels. Nothing is more annoying to me than a list that doesn’t dip down into the $20 range for a simple table wine. Don’t be intimidated or angered by a wine list that doesn’t have many choices you know. You must remember that there are many wineries that release their wines only to restaurants. It’s a bit of an affectation really, but these are generally wines made in small quantities that would get lost on a shop shelf. They require a waiter or sommelier to make the sale. These wines can often be great fun and make for a unique drinking experience, so be open to unfamiliar choices, which any good wine list should have. And, finally, a wine list needn’t be long to be great. In fact, I take greater delight in the short, pithy wine list over the magnificent tome. If the former manages to suggest a few perfect and perfectly exciting choices for the cuisine at good prices, we should be happy. The long lists, deep with vintages of Bordeaux and Burgundy, can be fun to thumb through, but it is only rarely that I can afford something of that ilk. It’s what you can order by the glass that is the ultimate test. And so the lifeblood of Riddle’s wine list is the two pages of wines by the glass, according to Ayers. “Ours is a real dynamic wine-by-the-glass program,” he said. “With 22 wines by the glass, I watch that list closely to see what people are ordering, because what happens there influences all the other bottles.” Ayers will give you a sample of anything that’s open until you find the wine you like. This is the way he himself designs the list, by tasting and sampling and taking notes (he’s one of the most meticulous tasters and note-takers around). A great list like Riddle’s has plenty of great bottles to choose from (’82 Margaux anyone?), but what’s important is that it’s alive – changing and growing and evolving, just as its clientele.