The wine may be dry, but lists don’t have to be

EVEN for a wine lover like me, most restaurant wine lists are about as interesting to read as the Des Moines telephone directory.

Then there’s the list at Layla, a New York restaurant that specializes in Middle Eastern food.

The Layla list divides wines into categories:

* “What to Drink When Lost in the Desert.”

* “What Wines Did Noah Bring on the Ark?”

* “What Does Bacchus Drink When He Is Relaxing With the Other Gods?”

* “What Were King Tut’s Favorite Red Wines?”

Daniel Johnnes, the wine director for Layla and several other New York restaurants, says this approach “gives our customers something to talk about or ask about, and once you engage your customers in talking about wine, you have a better chance to do two things -- sell them wine and give them a good wine experience.”

It’s too bad more restaurants don’t understand that. Most wine lists are organized in such a monotonously similar way that diners are practically discouraged from ordering wine -- and thus deprived of the unique pleasure that wine provides.

Most lists are organized first by color and then either by grape or geographic origin or, on occasion, by “light,” “medium-bodied” and “full-bodied.” That’s understandable. It’s how most people tend to think of wine -- especially wine they’re about to order to accompany a meal.

But wine and food are supposed to be fun. Why can’t wine lists embody that sense of playfulness -- and maybe incorporate some useful information in the process? At the very least, I wish restaurants would rethink the organization of their lists, provide some variation on the standard red-white, Cabernet-Chardonnay divisions in a way that might lead customers to try something new.

Martini House in St. Helena, in the vinous heart of the Napa Valley, does just that with its 39-page list.

Nine with a screw cap

One page lists nine wines that come with screw tops rather than corks (and explains the problems with corks -- and with “corked” wines). Another page has wines made from high-altitude vineyards, both here and abroad, along with an explanation of how high elevation affects the wines.

Yet another page lists 22 organic wines, along with an explanation of the benefits of the biodynamic methods that produced them.

On Page 18, Martini House offers the wines of “World Winemakers” -- those who are producing wines in at least two countries (Paul Hobbs, in Argentina and the United States; Ricardo Cotarella, in Italy and France; Michel Rolland, in France and the U.S.).

Would you like to get a sense of how great a role terroir actually plays in winemaking? Why not order two 1999 Cotarella Merlots -- the Falesco Montiano from Italy and the Chateau Rocher Bellevue Caprice d’Angelique from Bordeaux. Same grape. Same vintage. Same winemaker. Different continents.

Page 11 of the Martini House list is headed “Restaurateurs Who Make Wine” and includes 10 wines produced by people who either run restaurants or work as sommeliers, not just in the wine country but in Los Angeles, Santa Maria and New York, as well. A good idea, I thought. It would be interesting to see what kind of wine is made by someone whose day job is either running a restaurant or recommending other people’s wines in a restaurant.

I liked Page 8 of the Martini House list best of all. It was titled “Women Winemakers We Love,” and it included 13 wines made by women -- not just superstars like Helen Turley, Heidi Barrett and Delia Viader but also those whose names may not yet be easily recognized by the casual visitor to the Napa Valley: Karen Work of Work Vineyards, Julianne Laks of Cakebread Cellars and Sandi Belcher of Long Vineyards.

Anything that can give women a boost in our male-dominated world is worth supporting, so I ordered the Sauvignon Blanc made by Pam Starr of Crocker & Star. I suspect I wouldn’t have ordered that wine had it simply been squeezed into a traditional list of Sauvignon Blancs, but it proved to be excellent -- and at $41, it was reasonably priced (all the more so when compared with the wine at the bottom of the same page, the 2000 Cabernet that Turley made for the Bryant Family Vineyards ... listed at a mere $625).

“I think this approach makes the whole process of ordering wine more fun and less intimidating, especially for people who are visiting the area for the first time and may not know a whole lot about wine,” says Lisa Minucci, the sommelier at Martini House.

I recently went to a restaurant in New York that takes Minucci’s concept one (big) step further: Instead of just one page of wines made by women, Annisa has a list made up entirely of such wines.

Annisa is run by two women -- chef Anita Lo and her front-of-the-house partner, Jennifer Scism, and Scism says it was Lo, working with Roger Daghorn, the sommelier at Chanterelle, who came up with the all-women concept when they were first putting their wine list together, before the restaurant opened in 2000.

“The name ‘Annisa’ is plural for ‘women’ in Arabic,” Scism says, “so I said, ‘OK, it seems like a good idea -- if we can get enough really good wines.’ ”

No problem.

Annisa’s list is impressive and well-chosen, with more than 80 wines from around the world -- and with the winemaker’s name in parentheses alongside each selection. In addition to the superstars and not-yet-stars from Napa and Sonoma, the list includes wines from France, Italy, South Africa and Australia -- even sake from Japan -- at prices ranging from $24 for a 2000 Chablis made by Celine Brocard to $220 for a Krug Grande Cuvee Champagne made by Caroline Krug.

Lighten up, L.A.

There may be a few restaurants in Los Angeles with wine lists that embody the originality of Annisa and Martini House or the playfulness of Layla, but I haven’t come across them yet (although the eclectic list at Opaline in West Hollywood does say, beneath Francois Cotat’s 2001 Chavignol Rose, “Don’t hate me for being pink”).

Given the creativity this town is known for, I would think some Los Angeles restaurant could come up with at least a page of “Hollywood Wines” on its list.

There’s even a winery in Napa Valley named Hollywood & Vine Cellars; it’s run by Doug Barr, a television actor-turned-writer/director-turned-vintner. The Hollywood wine list could also include the Niebaum-Coppola wines from Francis Ford Coppola and the MacMurray Ranch wines from the vineyard owned by the family of the late actor Fred MacMurray, as well as wines from vineyards owned by, among others, Fess Parker, Gerard Depardieu, screenwriter Robert Kamen, the Smothers Bros. and Steven Seagal.

On second thought, we could skip the Seagal wines. They’re even worse than his movies.

David Shaw can be reached at david.shaw@latimes.com.