Wine bars aren’t restaurants pretending to care about wine. They’re the inverse: wines that happen to have a kitchen attached.
I’ve spent decades hunting them across continents, not because I’m chasing Michelin stars or Instagram moments, but because wine bars are where the conversation between terroir and table gets honest. No sommelier theater. No $300 markups on mid-tier Burgundy. Just good bottles, simple food, and people who know the difference between selling wine and sharing it.
Here are five that earned my attention, and my return visits:
This place opened in 1896. Let that sink in. While the world was figuring out electricity, Giovanni Isola was pouring wine on Via Paolo Sarpi. Today, Luca Sarais, who was named Italy’s Best Enotecario in 2022, runs it with the same philosophy: open everything. Conegliano to Champagne. Chianti Classico to Amarone. The mescita at the bar isn’t curated for influencers. It’s curated for people who drink.
When I was in Milan regularly for almost a year, this was my Saturday “go to” place for wine, after lunch. The crowd was joyous. The wine selection was abundant, and it was a place you could relax. That’s the kind of place where you realize Milan’s soul isn’t in fashion week. It’s in corners like this.
Rue des Petits-Champs. Just off the Palais-Royal, Willi’s is a “mecca” for wine devotees. It was in 2011 that I first tasted my own wine with my longtime friend and the actual Willi, Mark Williamson. It was my 2009 Comunicano Double AA Cuvée that somehow ended up at one of the Rhone Valley’s most respected events that spring. The French don’t hand out compliments for California blends. But Mark poured it for other winemakers as we sat in the sunshine in Gigondas.
A year later, Bernard Bardou put that exact wine into a blind tasting near Montpellier. It beat Ogier. Chapoutier. Gaillard. That accidental do-over wine became a wine with a story, and it started with Mark. I go to Willi’s to discover what I don’t know. Bubbles. Check. Loire. Check. Stunning Chablis. Check. Oh, and yes, the wines of pal Sylvain Fadat’s Domaine D’Aupilhac.
While the decor has changed over the years, the space has expanded. The bar hasn’t changed. It’s still unpretentious. Still serious. Still one of those rare places where the wine list teaches you something you didn’t know you needed to learn.
Waterloo. Not the tourist Sydney, the one where locals actually live. This isn’t just a bottle shop with tables. It’s a proper wine bar with a chef who understands that share plates should complement the pour, not compete with it.
The list is global. The vibe is neighborhood. You can walk in, grab a cult Barossa Shiraz or an obscure Margaret River Chardonnay, and know it was chosen by someone who actually cares whether you enjoy it. That’s rarer than you’d think.
Australia’s wine culture gets pigeonholed as “big reds and beach wines.” The Wine Library proves that’s lazy thinking. This is where Sydney’s wine intelligence lives.
Temperance, New York (West Village)
Temperance does something radical: 100+ wines by the glass. Not “by the glass” in the sad, oxidized sense. Actually, by the glass. Fresh. Rotating. Eclectic.
The food is shareable without being precious. The space is intimate without feeling cramped. It’s the kind of wine bar you’d bring someone to test whether they were worth a second date. If they ordered a vodka soda, you knew.
The city has plenty of wine bars. It doesn’t have many who understand hospitality and wine as Temperance does.
10 Cases, London (Covent Garden)
Bistrot upstairs. Cave à Vin downstairs. The model is simple: they only ever order ten cases of any wine. When it’s gone, it’s gone. So the list is constantly rotating. Always interesting. Always worth asking, “What just came in?”
The Cave à Vin doesn’t take reservations. Walk-ins only. Which means it stays loose, unpretentious, and full of people who actually want to drink, not perform.
The upstairs Bistrot is more structured with modern Franco-European cooking that doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel but executes it cleanly. Either way, the wine drives the experience as it should.
The pattern across all five? No ego. No upselling. Just people who understand that wine bars exist to let the wine do the talking while good food and good company hold the room together.
I’ve been writing about wine since the mid-1980s.. I’ve visited hundreds of wineries. I’ve made my own wine and had it compete against Rhône legends in blind tastings. But some of my best wine memories didn’t happen in barrel rooms or tasting labs.
They happened at counters like these. With strangers who became friends over a pour. With winemakers who stopped by unannounced. With quiet Tuesday evenings where conversation and Grenache made perfect sense.
Wine bars are the antidote to wine snobbery. They strip away the noise and remind you why we drink in the first place: because life’s better with a glass in hand and someone interesting across the table.
Which wine bars have earned your loyalty? The ones where the bartender remembers your name, or at least your palate?