Maynards Kitchen

The wine list at Maynards Kitchen reads like someone printed off the top sellers from a Total Wine circular and called it a day. Twenty-one labels that you've seen at every airport bar and chain restaurant between here and LAX. There's nothing here that suggests anyone spent more than 20 minutes thinking about this program.

This is a parade of mass-market brands — Woodbridge, Josh Cellars, Forest Ville, Apothic — with a couple of slightly more respectable names like La Crema and Whitehaven sprinkled in to keep things from being a complete embarrassment. The regional diversity is essentially nonexistent: we're looking at a very California-heavy lineup with token representation from New Zealand (Whitehaven) and Argentina (Gascon Malbec). No old-world presence to speak of, no interesting domestic producers, no small growers, nothing that reflects the character of the Southwest or even the broader American wine scene. For a restaurant attached to a historic and characterful hotel like the Congress, this list is a real missed opportunity.

We don't have confirmed by-the-glass counts, but given the roster of labels here, expect the BTG options to be whatever the distributor is pushing hardest this quarter. If Meiomi Pinot Noir and Apothic Red Blend are on this list, you can be confident they're pouring by the glass — and that should tell you everything you need to know about the ambition level. We'd skip the pours and go straight to the bar for a cocktail.