Carbone Vino's Wine List: Value or Just More Overpriced Restaurant Wine?

Carbone Vino, the wine-focused little brother of trendy Italian restaurant and New York-import Carbone, boasts that its wine loot is "peerless," unmatched. Co-founder Mario Carbone told the Robb Report that the restaurant is sitting on a cellar with $1 million in wine on any given night. So, is it possible to enjoy a nice glass there without applying for a second mortgage? We decided to find out.

It sort of is.

The space at Carbone Vino was created to celebrate a "leisurely European mindset," according to designer Ken Fulk. Their everyday wine list — not the 30-some page list in red leather binders used in Carbone the restaurant — is not cheap. But there is a decent assortment priced around $18 for a quartino, a 250-ML serving. That’s one-third of a bottle and the equivalent of two or three glasses.

With these, the markups aren’t ridiculous, given the way the restaurant business typically treats wine. Bottles are often marked up to around three or four times a wine’s wholesale price. Too many restaurants work on 6-to-1 for wine by the glass, which is why an ordinary $12 bottle of supermarket wine costs $9 or $10 a glass.

More impressive was the quality and service. Most of the wines offered in the quartino were of much higher quality than expected; best yet, the usual suspects from the biggest producers were missing.

And the service? Oh my. Sommelier Cameron Cronin was available for an intelligent conversation, something that doesn’t happen nearly as often as it should. He knew the list and answered questions without being condescending (which even happens to those of us who drink wine for a living).
Especially impressive was the Bisol prosecco ($16 a quartino). It was more interesting and less sweet than most proseccos. We'd buy it again, and we don’t even like prosecco. The Triennes rosé from Southern France ($18 a quartino) was classic take on what wine geeks call wild strawberry fruit, long and clean and stony.

The not-so-good parts? The food cost more than the wine, which is saying something when all two people have is pizza and a salad. Also, there weren't any Texas wines, as near as we could tell. Both McPherson and Duchman make wines that would be good fits for the quartino list. Plus, the Triennes was the only rosé on the quartino list, despite this being the middle of summer (though Cronin told me they didn’t sell much rosé).

There are some Texas wines in the restaurant's big red book, but the less said about the big red book the better. It’s not so much that some of the wines cost hundreds and even thousands of dollars — how about $1,200 for a half-bottle of Chateau d’Yquem, the legendary French dessert wine, or $685 for a bottle of Cristal, rappers’ favorite bubbly? If the 1 percent wants to pay those prices, who are we to try and save them from themselves? Rather, it’s the more affordable wines that are the most overpriced. A bottle of Italian Scarpetto Frico rosé goes for $10 a bottle of at Central Market; it was $48. And Ridge’s fine Lytton Springs zinfandel blend, about $45 retail, costs $140. That’s almost five times the wholesale price.

So stick with the quartino list — and accept that pizza costs $31 these days.

Carbone Vino, 1617 Hi Line Drive (Design District), 5 - 11 p.m. Tuesday - Sunday; closed Monday