Stella's Market & Wine Bar

You walk into what looks like a neighborhood grocery and leave wondering why your actual wine bar doesn't have this much personality. The list is compact but it clearly had a human being with opinions behind it — not just a distributor's catalog dumped into a menu.

The list punches above its weight for a market concept, pulling from California, Oregon, New Zealand, France, Portugal, Italy, and even the Finger Lakes. There's real geographic range here without the bloat of a list that's trying too hard. The standout is the Domaine Chevalier Crozes-Hermitage Syrah — that's a legitimate Northern Rhône producer sitting next to approachable crowd-pleasers like Acrobat Pinot Noir, which tells you someone actually thought about this. The gaps are real — no depth in Burgundy, Champagne, or Spain — but for a market wine bar in Richmond, the selection is doing its job.

Ten-plus options by the glass at $9–$14 is solid value, and the range covers white, red, and enough regional variety to keep it interesting across a table. The glass program doesn't rotate aggressively — this feels like a set-it list rather than one that changes with the seasons — but what's there is well-chosen and fairly priced.