Lamberti's Ristorante & Wine Bar

The wine list at Lamberti's lands somewhere between a serious Italian-focused program and a greatest-hits California roster — and that tension is actually kind of interesting. Eighty-five labels is a real list for a neighborhood Italian spot in North Irving, not just a laminated afterthought. You can tell someone put thought into this, even if that someone wasn't always thinking about your wallet.

Italy gets its due respect here: the Massolino Serralunga d'Alba Barolo 2018 and the Allegrini Amarone della Valpolicella anchor the Old World side, with the Masseria Frattasi Caudium Aglianico offering a Southern Italian wildcard most suburban Italian restaurants wouldn't touch. California plays a supporting role with the expected heavy-hitters — Jordan Cab, Merry Edwards Pinot Noir and Sauvignon Blanc, Paul Hobbs, Chappellet — which reads more like a steakhouse wine list than an Italian trattoria, but it'll keep the Napa faithful happy. South America and other international regions fill out the periphery without much personality. The Fratelli Alessandria Barolo Chinato is the most interesting outlier on the entire list — a digestivo-style aromatized wine that almost no one stocks in Dallas-Fort Worth.

Thirteen options by the glass is a respectable count for a place this size, though the specific pours aren't fully published so it's hard to know how much overlap there is with the bottle list. The Broletto Lambrusco and Marenco Strev Moscato d'Asti both appear at accessible price points that suggest the by-the-glass program skews approachable rather than ambitious. If the Aglianico or anything Italian-regional makes it into the glass pours, that's worth asking about when you sit down.