Caet Seafood | Oysterette

Walking into a seafood spot in Ridgeland, Mississippi and finding a Wine Spectator Best of Award of Excellence recipient — held since 2017 — is genuinely surprising. The list lands somewhere between polished steakhouse and coastal wine bar, covering 150-plus bottles across California, France, and Italy. For a town that doesn't exactly scream wine destination, this is a real effort.

The list is California-heavy in the best way for a seafood context — Kistler and Far Niente Chardonnays anchor the whites, giving you options that actually flatter oysters and Gulf shrimp rather than fighting them. On the red side, Duckhorn Merlot and Caymus Cabernet do the crowd-pleasing work, while Marchesi Antinori's Tignanello and Louis Jadot Burgundy signal that whoever built this list wanted more than just a safe play. The French and Italian selections are the sleepers here — not deep enough to call it an old-world cellar, but thoughtful enough to reward diners willing to look past the California anchors. Gaps exist in the southern hemisphere and natural wine space, but for Gulf Coast seafood, the focus is defensible.

Somewhere between 12 and 20 pours by the glass is a healthy number for this format, and the range appears to mirror the bottle list's California-France-Italy axis. We'd expect to find at least one Chardonnay option from the Kistler or Cakebread tier by the glass, which makes this genuinely useful for the solo diner cracking a dozen oysters at the bar. No evidence of a rotating glass program, which is the one miss — a seafood-focused list like this would benefit from seasonal by-the-glass swaps.