Wine Bars

Just a Bar?

The purpose of wine bars is to provide more of a “sophisticated” atmosphere than the normal bar scene, but more importantly to give options to the wine drinking crowd out there. Let’s face it: going to your favorite bar may give you a great gin and tonic, but may not have the best wine choices.

About Wine Bars

Wine bars are an excellent place to go as an alternative to bars. First, if you’re not in a cocktail-drinking mood, you can indulge yourself with tons of different wine choices. As a normal bar would have a plethora of cocktail and hard alcohol choices, so too does a wine bar have an equal amount of wine choices.

The days of your wine choices at a bar being “red or white” are over. You have everything from sparkling shiraz from Australia to your regular chardonnay from Napa…and everything in between. Your hardest choice is to figure out what style of wine you’re in the mood for.

Glass Pours

The greatest aspect of wine bars is the availability to taste these wines by the glass. We’ve all gone to restaurants and saw a wine on the list that looked intriguing, but it was not available by the glass, only by the bottle. Glass pours are fantastic because you can try many different wines that you haven’t had before or you can splurge on trying that one expensive bottle of wine by ordering a glass of it. Wines bars often serve wine by either a two-ounce pour, five-ounce pour, half-bottle or full bottle. This provides so many options to your tasting experience! You can try four or five two-ounce pours just to try different wines, or you can use those smaller pours to find a taste of a wine you’re looking in a bottle for you and your guests. Perhaps you’re set on the five ounce pour because it’s a full glass of wine to enjoy rather than a small two-ounce glass. Half-bottle pours into a decanter are also nice because a bottle might be too much for you and your friend. Choice of pours is equally as important as the choice of wines in my opinion.

Wine Flights

Wine bars are also notorious for having “flights” of different wines. This works by the wine person at the bar setting up groups of three to five wines that are poured together, so you can try those glasses at one time. This is not only fun, but a great learning experience: side-by-side comparison is a great way to notice the differences and similarities in wine. The flights can be anything—Zinfandels from different areas of California, a flight of red wines from the Rhone Valley of France or chardonnays from Burgundy versus Oregon. If they have these types of flights on the menu, try them.

Using Wine Servers

If you are a choice-overload person who can’t make a decision with so many great options, don’t distress. If you have an idea of what kind of wines you like, just tell the wine servers what you’re looking for. Their job is to match wines to your palate, so leaving it in their hands sometimes is a good decision. If you’re a fan of lean, highly acidic white wines, tell them. If you’re a fan of big, bold, ripe zinfandels, tell them! They have probably tasted all the wines on the list, so use that knowledge to your own benefit. Most reputable wine bars will have a policy that if they recommend a wine to you and you don’t like it, they will take it back with no questions asked…that should help take the fear from ordering a wine you may not like.

Give it a Try!

So next time you’re looking for an after-work place to hang out with friends and try some fun, new wines, consider a wine bar in your town. Expand your wine knowledge and experience at the same time you’re enjoying company of friends and co-workers. You may be even lucky enough to find a wine bar that serves food to accompany the wines so you don’t even have to eat after you get home. Either way, have fun and try new things. Enjoy!