The Wine List That Champions the Underdog

The wine list at a thoughtful Vermont restaurant increasingly reads like an argument for the underdog. Alongside the familiar names, you'll find obscure grapes, small producers, and — more and more — bottles from Vermont's own cold-climate vineyards, still a young and improbable industry.

The impulse is partly philosophical. Sommeliers here tend to favor character over prestige, seeking out distinctive wines from lesser-known regions and small farmers who work the way the state's own producers do. Pouring the obscure and the local fits a place that has always rooted for the small operator.

Vermont wine itself is the boldest bet on the list. Growing grapes this far north was long thought impossible, but hardy new hybrid varieties have made a modest local wine industry viable, and the results are improving fast. Serving those bottles is an act of faith in a fledgling craft, and a way of extending the farm-to-table ethos to the glass. The wine list becomes a statement: that the interesting story, the local story, is worth telling — even when, especially when, it's still being written.