Hartford's skyline finally has a wine list to match
Hartford · Hartford · Fine Dining · Visit Website ↗
Reviewed June 12, 2026
Wingman Metrics
You open this list expecting a safe hotel-lobby wine card and instead you get 237 bottles that read like someone actually cares — grower Champagne, Jura oddities, Canary Islands whites, and serious Burgundy all sharing the same pages. It's genuinely surprising, and in the best possible way. The Hartford skyline through the windows is the view; the wine list is the show.
The depth here is real and it runs in every direction. The Champagne section alone — Egly-Ouriet Grand Cru, Emmanuel Brochet rosé, Krug Grande Cuvée, a 2006 La Grande Dame, and a Jeroboam of Lanson for the table that really wants to commit — would embarrass most wine bars. The French backbone is stacked: Beaujolais from Foillard père et fils, Dutraive, and Anne-Sophie Dubois; Burgundy from Comtes Lafon, Denis Mortet, and Dominique Lafon; Loire Chenin from Thibaud Boudignon and Chidaine; and Rhône Syrah from Jamet. But the list doesn't stop at France — Falkenstein Mosel Rieslings, Envinate Canary Islands whites, Arnot-Roberts California, Walter Scott Oregon Chardonnay, and a Bulgarian pét-nat from Zagreus give you enough detours to spend an hour just reading. The only mild gap: zero by-the-glass pours listed, which means every table is committing to a bottle from the jump.
There are no listed by-the-glass pours on this wine list — every option is bottle-only. For a fine dining room with an active specials program, we'd expect some glass options to exist in practice, so ask your server what's being poured by the glass tonight before you assume you're locked into a bottle. The active program suggests they rotate things through, but the printed list won't help you here.
Alex Foillard Brouilly, Beaujolais 2020 — $80
Alex Foillard — son of the legendary Jean — makes Brouilly with the same granite-driven precision his dad brings to Morgon, and at $80 this is one of the more honest prices on a list where you could easily spend three times that. Bright, structured, and completely at home at a fine dining table.
Francois Rousset Martin 'du Professeur' Savagnin, Cotes du Jura 2020
Most guests will skip right past this in favor of something they recognize. Don't. Rousset-Martin is one of the Jura's quiet overachievers, and a sous-voile Savagnin at a Hartford fine dining restaurant is the kind of thing that makes a meal memorable. Nutty, oxidative, completely unlike anything else on the table.
Chateau Lascombes Cabernet Sauvignon, Margaux 2010
At $275, you're paying a significant premium for a Margaux second estate that has had a complicated reputation over the years. For roughly the same money or less, you could be drinking Clos du Jaugueyron Margaux 2019 at $260 — a smaller, more focused property with a better recent track record. The vintage prestige on the Lascombes doesn't justify the price differential here.
Domaine Jamet Syrah, Cote Rotie 2022 + Chef's meat course or dry-aged beef
Jamet's Côte-Rôtie is one of the Northern Rhône's benchmarks — smoky, iron-boned, with that signature olive and violet character. Against a rich, properly rested meat course at a fine dining kitchen like this, it becomes something close to a perfect equation. This is the bottle you open when the meal calls for a moment.
🔥 The Bottom Line
The Foundry is doing something rare in Connecticut: running a genuinely ambitious, globally curious wine list in a room that looks the part and has the staff to back it up. Send your friends here without hesitation — and tell them to skip the safe choices.
One wine list review, one adventure pick, one quick tip, and a personal note. Every week. Under 500 words.