Death & Taxes

You walk into a downtown Raleigh room built around fire and smoke, and then the wine list hands you a Schiava from Alto Adige and an orange Chardonnay from Mendoza. That disconnect is exactly what makes this place interesting. Ashley Christensen's team clearly has opinions, and they're not keeping them to themselves.

The list skews natural-wine-adjacent without going full hipster farmer co-op — there's a Loire Cab Franc rosé from Guiberteau sitting next to a Novelty Hill Viognier from Washington's Columbia Valley, which tells you these folks are mixing Old World instincts with genuine American curiosity. France and Italy anchor the list, but the real character comes from the outliers: a Carignan-Valdigue blend from Mendocino, a Grillo from Sicily, and that Santa Julia orange Chardonnay from Argentina that most restaurants wouldn't touch. The gaps show — no dedicated Burgundy reds, thin on Spain, and the bottle list depth remains a question mark. But for a hearth-focused restaurant, the wine program punches well above the expected.

Fourteen options by the glass is genuinely generous, and the range covers sparkling, orange, rosé, white, and red without padding the list with filler. The Beaujolais Nouveau from Chermette and the Muscadet from Louis Métaireau both feel like active, deliberate choices rather than afterthoughts. What we don't know is how often the list rotates — and at these price points, that matters.