Au Courant Regional Kitchen

You're in Benson, Omaha — not exactly the first city that comes to mind when you're craving a Beaujolais cru and grower Champagne. But Au Courant hands you a list that reads like a well-edited Parisian wine shop, and that alone earns some serious attention. It's compact, it's confident, and it knows exactly what it's doing.

The list leans hard into France and Italy, and we mean that as a compliment. Loire Valley whites, Beaujolais cru reds, Burgundy, Rhône, and Piedmont producers like G.D. Vajra give this thing real backbone — these aren't grocery store names filling space. There's some New World support to keep things accessible, but the soul of this list is unambiguously European. The only real knock is depth: it's a short list, and if you land on a busy night with specific tastes, your options narrow fast.

Eight to twelve pours on any given night, which is a solid count for a neighborhood spot this size. The Loire Valley Sauvignon Blanc by the glass is a smart, food-friendly anchor, and the rotating nature of a chef-driven program means the glass list tends to track whatever's interesting on the bottle side. We'd love to see a Beaujolais cru or a grower Champagne make it to the glass program more consistently.