Submitted photoFrench Bordeaux are an essential part of the wine list of any upscale steakhouse. Not all are expensive: This 2012 Château Bellevue Rougier blend is available at markets for under $15.

For true wine lovers, finding a restaurant with a sufficiently diverse wine list to challenge their palates may be as important as the food itself.

In Bend, several restaurants have selections with a special appeal for wine lovers.

Brickhouse maintains a list of approximately 500 wines, including 26 by the glass. Newly reopened 900 Wall offers about 250 wines by the bottle and a whopping 65 by the glass. Ariana Restaurant, Jackalope Grill, Zydeco and 5 Fusion & Sushi Bar are among others with outstanding wine selections.

What makes a good wine list? Is it the pure volume of selections? Is it the range of prices? Is it the variety of choices — red, white, rosé and sparkling?

In fact, it’s all those. And much more.

Ron Lybeck, a longtime Bend server (now at Ariana), created the wine lists at four New York restaurants when he worked in the city as a sommelier. Wine selections, he said, must appeal to diners even as they present a statement of the restaurant’s identity. “If it is a cuisine-driven menu, the chef-owner has a sense of composition and style of execution that should be enhanced by the wine list,” he said.

Pairing with food

Jeff Porad, Brickhouse’s owner and a lifelong wine aficionado, said it’s most important that wine pairs well with the food being delivered. Equal to its standing as Central Oregon’s leading steakhouse, about 80 percent of the wines in Brickhouse’s catalog are reds, ranging in price from about $25 all the way to $800 a bottle.

“Most people spend between $50 and $100 on a bottle of wine when they dine here,” Porad said. “So you want to have some variety from different regions, styles and price points.”

That variety includes high-priced Bordeaux, “trophy wines” such as Château Lafite-Rothschild and Château Latour Pauillac, cabernet sauvignon blends that run over $600 a bottle.

Naturally, the number of low-end selections is far greater. “Great wines come in all price points,” Porad said. “The technology in winemaking is so widespread and commonplace that, in this day and age, almost all wines are good.”

Because Brickhouse also has a highly regarded seafood menu, its wine list must appeal to white-wine drinkers. “A lot of people in our restaurant don’t go for the more exotic white wines,” Porad said. “It’s still a chardonnay, pinot gris, sauvignon blanc clientele. But we are fairly well rounded on white varietals from major producing regions.”

Lybeck seconded the emphasis on traditional fine-dining wines — chardonnay, cabernet, pinot noir — at a restaurant such as Brickhouse, with its classic menu. A smaller selection of “adventurous choices,” he suggested, is also appropriate: “If the food is interesting and challenging, are there selections on the wine list equally interesting and challenging? Say, sancerres, vermentinos, nebbiolos and Rhônes?”

Brickhouse tries to cover all ends. “A lot of California wines, you just pop a cork and start drinking,” offered Porad. “Some people think that the only wines worth drinking are Italians. They are pretty much created to be served with food.”

Careful selections

Too many restaurants, Lybeck said, present a short list of wines that represent “just a workable selection, another revenue stream.” These are establishments, he said, whose wine lists “read like a list of high-rating, surefire sales — unimaginative, rote lists that offer wines that diners must settle for. They could be in any restaurant, anywhere.

“Wine lists that never evolve, that serve the restaurant’s bottom line, bore me,” he added.

A restaurant need not be high-end to offer a diverse selection. Jackson’s Corner and Spork are two Bend restaurants that Lybeck cited as having excellent short wine lists. “They care enough to avoid wine boredom,” he said. “This speaks to me because, as a consumer, I like to see that the places I frequent are not lazy. If they care enough to do a little homework about their wine selections, they have earned more space on my dining bandwidth.”

Some restaurants, Lybeck said, fall into the category of special-occasion establishments, places that diners may visit once or twice a year to celebrate birthdays, engagements or promotions. These restaurants, he said, should go beyond champagne and good sparkling wines to feature exceptional wines in every category on their list.

“Careful selections in all price tiers spread value through the entire list,” he said. “They make the list more thorough and thus more thoughtful for the guests’ interests.”

Brickhouse, said Porad, maintains a cutting-edge iPad wine list.

He added, “Every time there’s a vintage change or a new wine or a last bottle, we are able to update immediately.”

— John Gottberg Anderson specializes in Northwest wines. His column appears in GO! every other week. He also writes for our food section.