Red-checkered comfort with honest Italian pours
Route 28 Corridor · Kingston · Italian · Visit Website ↗
Reviewed July 24, 2026 · How we review
RagingWine reviewed La Florentina Restaurant’s wine list and gave it The Reliable — RagingWine’s Vibe-Check rating. How RagingWine reviews wine lists →
Wingman Metrics
The wine list at La Florentina is exactly what you'd expect from a warm, family-run trattoria on Ulster Avenue — short, Italian-focused, and priced to match the room. Nothing here is going to make a wine nerd's pulse quicken, but nothing is going to insult your wallet either. It's a list built for the food, not for the wine.
The list leans hard into Italy, which makes sense given the kitchen's focus, but the depth doesn't go much further than that single-sentence description. Chianti is the anchor — reliable, food-friendly, appropriate — and Castello di Gabbiano shows up as the carafe option, which tells you something about the ambition level here. With an estimated 20–40 bottles in total, you're not getting regional Italian exploration; you're getting crowd-pleasers that work with pizza and penne. There are no visible nods to southern Italy, Friuli, or anything that might surprise a guest who actually cares about the list.
Estimated five to eight pours by the glass, all Italian, all predictable. There's no evidence of a rotating program or any attempt to spotlight something beyond the usual suspects. It gets the job done for a weeknight dinner but don't come here hoping to work through something interesting glass by glass.
Castello di Gabbiano Chianti (carafe) — $20.95
A carafe of Castello di Gabbiano Chianti at this price point is genuinely fair — it's a recognizable, food-friendly Tuscan that holds up against the wood-fired pizza without breaking the bank. For a table sharing a pie and a pasta, this is the move.
Chianti (house pour)
Easy to dismiss as the default Italian-restaurant wine, but at La Florentina the Chianti is doing real work — its acidity cuts through the cheese and tomato of the brick oven pies in a way that a heavier red simply wouldn't. Sometimes the obvious choice is obvious for a reason.
Top-end bottles (reported ceiling ~$38)
At a trattoria operating at this price point and list depth, spending near the top of the bottle range gets you diminishing returns fast. The kitchen is pizza and pasta — save the splurge for a list that actually supports it.
Castello di Gabbiano Chianti + Wood-fired brick oven pizza
High-acid Sangiovese and char-blistered tomato-and-cheese pizza is one of the more reliable combinations in Italian-American dining. The wine's bright acidity matches the sauce, the tannins handle the crust, and the whole thing costs you less than $25.
The Bottom Line
La Florentina isn't a wine destination — it's a neighborhood Italian with a wine list that knows its lane and stays in it. Come for the pizza, order the Chianti carafe, and don't overthink it.
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