Two glasses of white wine stood shoulder to shoulder on the table: one pale the other golden, one with a rich buttery caramel accented character, the other with the crisp, light, fresh minerality so sought after these days; one from Uruguay, the other from Spain. As the platters of tapas kept coming, the wines seemed to change character, each dish bringing out new flavors.

A wine bar should be a place where you can experience the full range of the wine maker’s art – a place where you match wine flavors with menu selections on a quest for the best combination. It should have carefully chosen wines, both mainstream and from far flung corners of the wine world. It’s best if the wines are hand made by small producers and judiciously picked by the bar staff.

There are a couple in Norwalk you’ll want to visit.

Tablao at 86 Washington St. in SoNo bills itself as a wine bar and restaurant and has 28 wines by the glass to back up its claim. It also has, as restaurants must these days, a good selection of craft beers, along with signature cocktails mixed by expert bartenders. What makes this a good wine bar, though, is the thoughtful construction of the wine list to explore high-quality, lesser-known wines and wine regions. It’s the kind of place where you can have enough faith in the wine pickers to try something new without fear of disappointment.

The wines here are mostly from Spain, Portugal, and South America – Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay – with a smattering of French and Italian, plus one lone representative from Napa. Most surprising, the wines (including the sparkling wines) are reasonably priced between $10 and $12 a glass.

Cheese and Charcuterie at Tablao

A couple dozen tapas choices plus salads, charcuterie, cheese, and a handful of large plates, provide ample opportunity to try lots of food and wine combos. In these situations, I hope everyone gets a different wine to try with a few tapas for the table. If it goes well, there’s a lot of plate passing and some shared sipping. Do this for two or even three rounds, and you’ll know a lot about the restaurant’s food and the breadth of their wine offerings.

Salmon Tartar with light-as-feather house-made potato chips was perfect for the crisp, fresh, organic Ipsum Verdejo from Spain, and the Grilled Calamari a la Plancha was excellent with the buttery caramel flavors of the Bouza Albariño from Uruguay. But if you switched the wines, the magic was gone. The wines were still good, but not in sync with the food.

Mencia, a little known grape from Spain, in the Pinot Noir style, was made into a delicious wine with dried fruit and dusty berry flavors by Adegas Guimaro in Spain. It was a treat with Chorizo sautéed with white beans and figs. A Tempranillo/Garnacha blend from Moro in Spain’s Ribera del Duero was a full-bodied, tannic, berry-scented wine, excellent with shiitake-sauced Hanger Steak. Again, reversing the food/wine matches didn’t work nearly as well.

All four wines were delicious on their own, but with the food, each had a favorite partner.

The Fat Cat Pie Co. on Wall St. only has four things on the menu – pizza, salad, cheese, and charcuterie. On the other hand, there are 33 wines by the glass and a bottle list that runs on for pages. This place is all about the wines.

Mark and Mike, the expert wine pickers at Fountainhead Wines (12 Knight St. just across from Fat Cat), are the creative forces behind this significant wine bar effort. They’ve spent their careers scouring the world, bringing us the best wines they can find. Many are imported directly by them and are only available at the store or restaurant.

The wine choices by the glass are organized as follows: Bubbly, White, Riesling (a favorite category here), Orange (white grapes fermented on the skins like a red), Pink (to meet the Rosé craze), and Chilled Red (bet you never saw that one before). There are also four categories of red: Red – mouth-watering/mineral driven; Red – lush, opulent; Red – Garriguey with scrub herbs; and Red – Darker, full-bodied with earth and spice. The list is an in-depth survey of some of the world’s most enjoyable wines from Germany, Italy, France, Spain, Oregon, Chile, South Africa, Paso Robles, and Sonoma. The very reasonable prices range from $5 to $13 with the majority between $7 and $10.

Pizza at Fat Cat

I’ll confess I oversimplified the menu a little: there are more than a dozen pizza toppings, six salad condiments, and three choices of dressings, which make for a lot of possibilities. The rotating selection of cheese from the legendary Ken Skovron at Darien Cheese and the changing list of Lazlo’s charcuterie are always delicious . But wine is at the heart of this true wine bar, and what a selection it is! There’s something for everyone and no way to taste them all – at least not in one sitting.

The knowledgeable staff at Fat Cat

The staff here is knowledgeable and enthusiastic about the wines. Ask them anything and they’re likely to know, but if they don’t, they’ll find someone else who will. It’s clear they enjoy being on the inside of this remarkable wine program.

A great wine bar experience, besides being lots of fun, should begin with plenty of tasting and end up with at least a few new favorite dishes and wines.

A trio of wines at Fat Cat