Old Hickory Steakhouse

Walking into Old Hickory inside the Gaylord Palms, your expectations for a resort steakhouse wine list are somewhere between "fine" and "forget it." Then you see the list — 300 to 500 bottles deep, with Opus One, Gaja Barbaresco, and Chateau Lynch-Bages sitting right there — and you recalibrate fast. This is a serious wine program hiding inside a convention resort, and it earned its Wine Spectator Best of Award of Excellence in 2024 for good reason.

The list is anchored hard in California, France, and Italy, and the producers they've chosen aren't filler — Caymus, Silver Oak, Jordan, Stag's Leap, and Chateau Montelena cover the California Cab spectrum from approachable to iconic, while the French side pulls real weight with Lynch-Bages Pauillac and Louis Jadot Burgundy. Italy shows up swinging with Antinori's Tignanello and Gaja Barbaresco, both of which would look at home on a list twice this price point. The gaps are on the smaller, under-the-radar producer front — there's no natural wine experimentation here, no Jura curiosities or funky Beaujolais — but that's not what Old Hickory is going for. This is a classic steakhouse list done with genuine care and depth.

Twenty to thirty-five options by the glass is generous for a steakhouse, and at $12 to $22 a pour, the range hits both the casual diner and the serious wine drinker. We'd love to see more rotation and a half-price program to reward regulars, but what's here is well-chosen and properly stored — no oxidized pours from a bottle that's been open since Tuesday.