Union Cafe

The wine list at Union Cafe takes about four seconds to read — and that includes blinking. Nine Woodbridge and Barefoot labels, all priced at $8 a glass, staring back at you like a CVS endcap that got a little too comfortable. The room is genuinely fun and the drag shows are legitimately world-class, but whoever put this list together was not thinking about the wine drinkers in the building.

This is as California-generic as it gets: Woodbridge covers the reds and most of the whites, Barefoot handles the sweeter end, and that's the whole story. No depth, no regional curiosity, no producer worth mentioning to a friend. There's a J Roget Brut split on the menu that technically counts as bubbles, but J Roget is the bottom rung of a very long ladder. If you came here hoping to find something interesting — a skin-contact white, an off-the-beaten-path red, literally anything with a story — keep walking.

Eight of the eleven labels are available by the glass, which sounds generous until you realize the list is eleven bottles of mass-market California wine. Every pour is $8, which is honest pricing for what you're getting — essentially, wine as a mixer at a bar that happens to serve food. Rotation appears to be nonexistent; this list has the energy of something that hasn't changed since the Obama administration.