Wit & Wisdom

You walk into a Four Seasons tavern on Baltimore's waterfront with a wood-burning hearth crackling behind you and a wine list thick enough to use as a doorstop — roughly 200 to 300 bottles deep. The first flip through tells you exactly where this place stands: Napa Cabernet is king, Bordeaux is the loyal court, and anything adventurous is not on the guest list. It's polished, confident, and unapologetically expensive.

The list reads like a greatest hits album for the Napa faithful — Caymus, Silver Oak, Duckhorn, Hourglass, Opus One, and Corison all show up, which means you're in capable hands if your credit card is ready for impact. Bordeaux gets a respectable nod on the Old World side, and there's a 1997 Broadbent Port floating around for those who want to end the night properly. What's missing is any real curiosity: no meaningful Rhône presence, no Italian depth, no natural wine flirtation, nothing that would make a list-obsessed drinker lean in and say 'wait, what's this.' The sommelier clearly knows wine — they've just been handed a brief that says 'give the Four Seasons crowd what they want.'

Twenty to thirty pours by the glass is genuinely strong for a hotel restaurant, and the program appears to rotate with enough intention to keep regulars from getting bored. You're mostly in Napa and Bordeaux territory here too, which tracks with the bottle list — don't expect a Txakoli or a Jura Chardonnay to show up and surprise you. For what it is, the glass program is well-executed and gives you a real shot at drinking something serious without committing to a full bottle.