La Masseria

Walking into La Masseria feels like someone airlifted a Tuscan farmhouse onto a Main Street in Rhode Island — and then, surprisingly, stocked it with a wine list that actually earns its setting. The list runs 150-plus bottles deep, skews hard Italian, and doesn't apologize for it. This is not a place hedging its bets with a California Cab safety net.

The list reads like a greatest-hits tour of the Italian peninsula done right — Barolo and Brunello di Montalcino anchor the north, Amarone della Valpolicella brings the muscle, and Chianti Classico Riserva covers the crowd-pleasing middle ground. Go south and you'll find Nero d'Avola and Montepulciano d'Abruzzo holding it down for the value-seekers. Gavi di Gavi and Barbera d'Asti round out the whites and lighter reds without feeling like afterthoughts. The gaps are real — non-Italian drinkers are mostly on their own — but for a focused Italian program in a state not known for serious wine lists, this holds up well enough to earn Wine Spectator's Award of Excellence, which it's held since 2020.

Twelve to twenty options by the glass is a solid spread for a restaurant of this size, with prices landing between $10 and $18 — reasonable for an upscale dining room. We'd expect the pours to track the bottle list closely, meaning Chianti and Barbera likely carry the glass program's weight. No rotating special pours or standout by-the-glass program to shout about, but what's here does the job.