Restaurant Martín

The list at Restaurant Martín signals immediately that someone here actually cares — there's Burgundy with real pedigree, a German blanc de noir that most Santa Fe restaurants wouldn't touch, and boutique Napa alongside it. It's a focused, 100-175 bottle list that skews Old World without abandoning California entirely. The room matches: elegant without being stuffy, and the wine program follows that same lead.

France anchors the list, with Burgundy doing the heaviest lifting — producers like Thibault Liger-Belair show up, which tells you someone's paying attention to the négociant-meets-terroir movement in the Côte d'Or. Germany makes a quiet appearance via Paul Anheuser from the Nahe, which is exactly the kind of left-field pick a good list uses to separate itself from the pack. California gets its due with Biale's Royal Punishers Petite Sirah — not a safe, crowd-pleasing Cab, but a bold, old-vine choice that fits the menu's ambition. The gaps are real though: South America, Spain, and domestic regions outside Napa are largely absent.

By-the-glass runs somewhere in the 10-16 option range, which is respectable for a fine dining spot of this size. We'd expect the pours to rotate with the kitchen's seasonal direction, though no formal rotation program was found — what's on the list is likely what's been on the list. Quality over quantity seems to be the philosophy, and that's the right call.