Perrone's Restaurant and Bar

The list at Perrone's runs 21 pages, and it takes about twelve of them before you understand what you're holding. Page two is a row of seven Wine Spectator Awards of Excellence, 2019 straight through 2025 — that tells you they're organized. Page twelve is where they stop being modest about it: seven vintages of Chateau Musar, the Bekaa Valley icon, reaching back to 1998. Nobody drives to a beach town expecting a Lebanese vertical. Order accordingly.

The Napa section here would carry most steakhouses on its own — a five-vintage Shafer Hillside Select run from 2015 to 2021, plus Quintessa at $365, Joseph Phelps Insignia at $494, and Realm 'The Bard' at $450. It is not the best part of this list. The Old World is where Perrone's actually lives. Rioja alone climbs from Remelluri Reserva at $75 through Lopez de Heredia Vina Tondonia Reserva at $114 to La Rioja Alta '890' Gran Reserva at $450. There are seven Brunellos, ten Barolo and Barbaresco listings, four Beaujolais crus, grand cru Chablis, and a Bordeaux run where Chateau Rauzan-Segla lands at $130 — less than half what the Napa cabernets one page over are asking. Spain brings Pingus's PSI at $78, Clos Mogador, and old-vine Bernabeleva garnacha. Then Lebanon, Etna, Australia, South Africa, and a Turley block of six single-vineyard zinfandels. If you want a gap to poke at, it's Germany and Austria — one Alsatian riesling, one gruner, and that's the lot. Against everything else on offer, that's a quibble.

Around 40 pours, which is not a typo. The standard program runs about fifteen — Chateau de Fontenille sauvignon blanc at $12, Carl Ehrhard Roseneck riesling at $11.50, K Vintners 'The Deal' syrah at $15 — all poured six ounces into a twenty-ounce glass, which is the correct way to do it. Then there's the reserve list, twenty more under Coravin, and this is the part worth planning around: Charles Smith's 'MCK' Oldfield-Boushey syrah at $20, Piazzo 'Valente' Barolo at $32, Chateau Rauzan-Segla at $35, Silver Oak at $60. Bubbles come off a Perlage system running a daily pour from the grower champagne list. Reserve bottles sit in a temperature and humidity controlled unit — whites at 47, reds at 61. Nobody sets that up by accident.