Jeff Ruby's Steakhouse

You open the wine list at Jeff Ruby's and it reads like a greatest hits album from the Napa Valley Fan Club circa 2005. Caymus, Silver Oak, Jordan, Opus One — all present, all accounted for, all priced for someone else's expense account. It's a confident list, just not a curious one.

The list leans hard on Napa Cabernet with a few French trophy bottles sprinkled in for prestige optics — Dom Pérignon for the proposal crowd, Opus One for the deal-closer. There's a nod to Tuscany with the Antinori Pèppoli Chianti Classico, but at $80 on a bottle you can find at retail for $25, it feels less like a discovery and more like a trap. Beyond the California and French heavy-hitters, the list doesn't venture far — no real depth in Burgundy, Rhône, Spain, or anywhere that might surprise you. This is a wine list built for recognition, not exploration.

We couldn't pin down the full by-the-glass program from available data, which is itself a minor red flag — a list this expensive should be showing off its pours. What we can say is that with a list anchored by big-name bottles, expect glass pours skewed toward the usual California suspects at predictably steep prices.