Xochi

The wine list at Xochi does something most upscale Mexican restaurants won't — it leads with Mexico. You're not hunting through token Baja bottles buried under a wall of California Cabs; the Mexican wine program here is front and center, curated, and clearly championed by someone who actually cares. That alone earns our attention.

With 150-200 bottles covering Mexico, France, and California, this list has real bones. The Mexican section pulls from Valle de Guadalupe heavyweights like L.A. Cetto and Vena Cava, plus the undersung Bichi out of Sonora — a producer making genuinely weird, genuinely good natural wines that almost nobody outside wine circles knows. France isn't an afterthought either: Domaine Weinbach from Alsace and the legendary Chateau Musar from Lebanon (yes, Lebanon) tucked in shows a curator who thinks in flavors, not just geography. California rounds it out with Raen's Royal St. Robert Cuvée Pinot Noir, a serious Sonoma Coast bottle that holds its own next to the rest. The gaps are minor — we'd love to see more depth in sparkling and South America — but overall this is a list that rewards exploration.

Twenty to thirty by-the-glass options is an ambitious pour program, and at Xochi it means you can actually work your way through Mexican wine without committing to a full bottle — which is exactly how discovery should work. The range appears to span whites, reds, and presumably some mezcal-adjacent territory on the spirits side, though we'd push the staff to rotate the BTG list more aggressively to keep regulars engaged.