The wine list is a pleasant surprise. The average bottle is about $60-$70, although you can impress a date with a bottle of Chateau Lafite-Rothschild '84 for $1,050. If you want to make a more serious impression, you'll have to imbibe at the Ritz-Carlton in Naples, where the dining room stocks a bottle of 1921 Chateau d' Yquem Sauterne for $25,000.

At the Sarasota Ritz-Carlton, you won't find wines that stock the shelves in area supermarkets or wine stores. Beverage manager Nigel Zweck is creating a cellar (it's a work in progress) that includes mostly boutique wines from small vineyards from all over the world. But a healthy sampling of the big names is there, too.

The cellar currently includes about 146 labels and is focused on Italian, Spanish, Australian and California vintages with a lesser number of French. That's because the dinner menu in the Vernona dining room is mostly Mediterranean, and the wine was chosen to pair with the food. Currently, the trendy choices are the pinot grigios and fume blancs. Zweck notes that the average markup per bottle is about 30 percent, a little higher on the lower-priced wines than on the expensive ones.

If you choose a glass of the house wine, you'll get Steven Kent cabernet sauvignon or chardonnay. The price range is $7-$12.50. That's the standard house pour not just in Sarasota, but in Ritz-Carltons all over the United States. The Ritz Champagne is bottled exclusively for the hotel chain by Charles Heidsieck. At $15 a glass, it is the single most requested beverage in all Ritz-Carlton establishments in the country.

The Ritz-Carlton Hotel

1111 Ritz-Carlton Drive, Sarasota

309-2008

Valet parking

Major credit cards

Ca d'Zan Bar & Cigar Bar

Monday-Thursday: 4 p.m. to 2 a.m.

Friday: 1 p.m.-1:45 a.m.

Saturday and Sunday: Noon to 1:45 a.m.