Johnny's Italian Steakhouse – Eau Claire

Walk in and the wine list feels like a greatest hits album — you know every track, none of them will surprise you, but the room sounds pretty good. At 160 bottles, it's a serious-looking document for a Holiday Inn-attached steakhouse in Eau Claire. Wine Spectator even gave it an award, which tells you this program is trying harder than most zip codes around it.

The list leans heavily on California Cabernet and Italian Pinot Grigio — the two poles of an Italian steakhouse wine program done by committee. Caymus, Cakebread, Josh Cellars, and Francis Ford Coppola fill out the American side, while Ruffino, Santa Margherita, and Tenuta di Arceno hold down Italy. There's a pleasant outlier in the Mercer Bros. Cabernet from Washington's Horse Heaven Hills, and the San Polo Toscana Rubio offers a sneaky Tuscan option most tables will skip. What's missing: Burgundy, Barolo, Rioja, anything from the southern hemisphere beyond Kim Crawford and a Malbec — the list has breadth within its lane but not much outside it.

The by-the-glass program runs roughly 20-25 options at $11–$16, which is a respectable count for this market. You'll find the usual suspects — Kim Crawford, Joel Gott Pinot Noir, Ruffino Chianti — but the range covers enough ground to get through a multi-course meal without repeating yourself. Don't expect the list to rotate much; this feels like a set-it-and-leave-it program.