Sweet Linda

Walking into Sweet Linda, you're expecting a cocktail menu and a cold beer — not a list that includes Canary Islands Listan Negro and Sicilian orange wine. The room glows neon and smells like a great dive bar, but the wine list is doing something decidedly more interesting than that. Eighteen labels isn't a lot, but every slot feels earned.

For a bar built around lobster rolls and late nights, the geographic range here is genuinely surprising — Loire Valley natural wine, Basque Txakolina, Priorat Cab-Temp blends, Oregon Sangiovese, and a Brunello all sharing real estate on the same page. The natural and low-intervention thread running through the list gives it a coherent identity rather than a random grab bag. There are gaps — no serious Burgundy, no deep German or Austrian options — but for 18 bottles, the curators clearly had opinions and weren't afraid to use them. The Champagne section skews predictably commercial with Moët and Dom Pérignon, which feels a bit like a different person wrote that section.

By-the-glass specifics aren't published, but based on the list structure and pricing, pours in the $18–$20 range appear to anchor the program — which is genuinely fair for the East Village. The range of styles available suggests you could go orange, sparkling, or natural red without any trouble. We'd love to see a rotating BTG program to match the ambition of the bottle list.