White Horse Tavern

You walk into one of the oldest taverns in America — low ceilings, candlelight, colonial charm oozing from every floorboard — and then you see the wine list. It's a greatest-hits playlist of grocery store staples dressed up in a $50-entrée room. The history of this place deserves better than Kim Crawford and La Marca.

The list leans heavily on California and a nod toward France, but what that means in practice is a parade of recognizable, mass-market labels that you'd find on the endcap at your local Total Wine. There's a name-drop of Hundred Acre — a legitimately serious Napa Cabernet — which feels wildly out of place next to Bonanza and J. Lohr, and suggests the list was built to impress on paper rather than drink with intention. Burgundy and Bordeaux get a mention in the region focus, but without specific producers or labels surfacing in the data, we're skeptical there's real depth there. The gaps are significant: no domestic Pinot Noir, no Rhône, nothing from Italy beyond the Santa Margherita, and zero adventurousness for a restaurant charging upscale prices.

There are roughly 10 to 16 pours by the glass, which sounds decent until you realize the lineup reads like a corporate hotel bar menu — Chateau Ste. Michelle Riesling, Bonanza Cab, La Marca Prosecco. The markup on these pours is all over the map: La Marca at $12 is actually close to fair given retail pricing, but Bonanza Cab at $12 a glass on a $22 retail bottle is harder to swallow. There's no visible rotation or seasonal curation happening here.