Bayou & Bottle

This is a whiskey bar first — the wine list knows its place and plays it smart. Fifty-ish bottles covering the standards with enough depth to surprise anyone who walked in for bourbon and stayed for dinner.

The list leans heavily on crowd-pleasing French and Italian classics with a sprinkling of California heavy-hitters. You'll find proper Champagne (Perrier-Jouët, Telmont, and if someone else is paying, Dom Pérignon 2015), solid Loire representation with Michel Armand Sancerre, and serious reds like Renato Ratti Marcenasco Barolo and Domaine De La Janasse Châteauneuf-du-Pape. There's nothing adventurous here — no natural wine, no oddball regions — but the picks are competent and the markups are surprisingly fair for a Four Seasons lobby bar. The Napa cab and Sonoma Coast Chardonnay selections hit the expected notes without getting greedy on pricing.

Ten pours that cover the basics without insulting your intelligence. The Zardetto Prosecco at $16 is a solid opener, and the Flowers Chardonnay from Sonoma Coast at $23 shows they're not just pouring the cheapest juice. The Clos du Val Cabernet at $26/glass isn't cheap, but it's Napa and the bottle's only $100, so the math works. Rotation seems minimal — this list doesn't change with the seasons.