Chez Fonfon

You open the wine list at Chez Fonfon expecting the usual restaurant French clichés — a Sancerre, maybe a Côtes du Rhône, done. Instead, you find Marcel Lapierre in Beaujolais and a serious Chablis from Droin sitting at prices that feel almost apologetic. This is a list built by someone who actually drinks wine, not someone who Googled 'French wine for restaurants.'

The list runs 100-150 bottles deep and stays almost entirely French, which given the bistro concept feels like conviction rather than laziness. Burgundy anchors it with Droin's Chablis holding it down on the white side, while the Beaujolais section punches above its weight with natural wine stalwart Marcel Lapierre — a producer you'd expect to find in a Brooklyn wine bar, not Birmingham. Loire gets proper representation through Domaine de la Pépière Muscadet and A. Neveu Sancerre, and the Rhône value tier with F. Balthazar Côtes-du-Rhône rounds things out for the table-wine crowd. The list isn't deep in the collector sense, but every bottle earns its place.

The by-the-glass program runs 10-16 options and skews toward the same thoughtful French regionalism as the bottle list — you can pour a glass of Chanrion Côte-de-Brouilly for $12 or start with Crémant de Saumur Rosé at $12, which is genuinely rare to find on a BTG list outside a major city. The range isn't enormous, but the quality-to-price ratio on nearly every pour is the kind of thing that makes you order a second glass before the entrée arrives.