Cotogna

The wine list lands in your hands and it's immediately clear someone here actually cares — this isn't a placeholder document thrown together to justify a corkage fee. It reads like a love letter to Italy written by someone who has done the travel, done the homework, and isn't trying to impress you with France. There's real depth here, and the room's energy matches it.

Four hundred to six hundred selections deep, and almost all of it Italian — which sounds limiting until you realize Italy is not one wine country, it's about twelve. Cotogna leans hard into the classics: Giacomo Conterno and Bruno Giacosa anchor the Piedmont section with serious Barolo and Barbaresco, while Biondi-Santi and Poggio di Sotto hold down Brunello with proper gravitas. Sicily shows up with Etna Rosso from Cornelissen and Benanti, which tells you someone here is paying attention to where the conversation is going. The Friulian section — Radikon, Gravner — is the real flex: those are oxidative, skin-contact wines that most Italian restaurants in America wouldn't touch, and Cotogna stocks them like they belong, because they do.

Somewhere in the range of a dozen to twenty pours by the glass, with enough rotation that you're not staring at the same tired Pinot Grigio for six months. The glass program skews Italian throughout, which is the right call given the kitchen. Don't sleep on asking what's open — staff here tends to have bottles cracked that aren't on the printed list.