From the rudimentary masculine places of old, contemporary steakhouses have mutated into higher forms of restaurant life. The menus still touch all the steakhouse basics but augment them with far more interesting options than the proverbial icy shrimp cocktails and prefab Caesar salads. Along with a reinvented menu, the steakhouse wine list has also evolved into a more intelligent, diverse and satisfying set of selections.

Gone at many steakhouses are the clumsy, heavy lists constructed under the delusion that only cabernet sauvignon and Bordeaux go with red meat, especially if the wines are too young and very expensive. Cabernet and Bordeaux can of course be great with steak and lamb, provided they are sufficiently aged. But today so many other wines, many of which were unknown or unavailable 20 years ago, are equally wonderful, more appealing to many people and easier on the wallet.

The Bowery Meat Company,, in the East Village, doesn’t like to call itself a steakhouse, hoping to avoid the constricting stereotypes of the term, but its meat-heavy menu certainly qualifies, as does its wine list, with its many American cabernets and Bordeaux wines.

But the list, constructed by Natalie Tapken and Matthew Krueger, ranges widely beyond, with affordable choices among new-wave California wines like the fresh, savory Forlorn Hope Ost-Intrigen 2013 from the Carneros district for $67, made from saint-laurent, a red grape better known in its home territory of Austria as sankt-laurent. It also includes excellent choices from Spain and Italy, the Rhône Valley, the Loire and the Jura. And if you must have a great Napa cabernet, I’d happily drink the 2002 Heitz Trailside Vineyard, a relatively good value at $194 for a top, aged Napa red.