Best Specialty Wine List

Devised as a terrific complement to the novel, well-prepared southern Italian cooking highlighted at A16 (named for the autoroute that traverses Campania, the region around Naples including Capri and the Amalfi coast), this wine list (currently seven pages and continually expanding under wine director/co-owner Shelley Lindgren, veteran of Fleur de Lys and Bacar) features nearly two dozen wines from Campania, a good sampling from Sicily, and more southern Italian vintages from the neighboring regions of Abruzzo, Calabria, Marche, Molise, Puglia, and Umbria. The choices are sophisticated and knowledgeable. Italian grape varietals produced in California are another specialty. You can sit at the wine bar in the front room and choose from among 40 wines by the glass, or several five-glass flights. Drinking one's way through this list is an extension course in Italian wine.