Wayne H.
Yelp
This wine bar had been recommended to us by a friend and I've been wanting to check it out for some time, but never had the chance. Well, last night, we finally had the chance!
The wine bar interior is quaint, but the vibe is awesome and the place is so full of energy... but, because it's small, there was a wait for a decent spot inside (one with a table, and not an upside down wooden crate on a long sofa - a creative use of space, for sure, but perhaps not best suited for food and drinks if you're planning to do that) so we opted for a table outside of the chocolate shop. By comparison, there is absolutely no vibe or charm outside of the wine bar - lol. It is overflow seating and it just feels super disconnected from the wine bar experience. If you get there early or don't mind waiting, grab a spot inside.
There are good BTG options - some solid crowd pleasers (in terms of varietals), but also some unique offerings (varietals and lesser known regions). The bottle list is small, but also had some great options. In terms of price - it's pretty on par with most places. I'm not a huge fan of labeling pours "half" vs "full" because it doesn't explain how much wine you get, but assuming 2.5oz for a half and 5oz for a full, the BTG prices are good - a full glass is close to, if not slightly cheaper than the bottle's wholesale price, which is pretty industry standard.
On the bottle list, you'll pay more to drink the wine in-house than to take it home. For drinking in-house, a couple of the bottles I recognized were just around or just shy of 2x whosesale, so really not bad. There are places charging 3x wholesale these days, so overall a good deal. In terms of their retail (to-go) prices - they are higher than you can find on Wine Searcher by anywhere from 25-50%, so definitely not the best place to buy retail unless the specific bottle you want isn't offered anywhere else.
So far so good - we ordered a bottle and the server seemed nice enough, but what happened next was honestly just strange and I'm not sure if it is representative of the wine bar. She brought bottle with the cork already half way pulled, then table side, pulled the cork, set the bottle down, then left. We both looked at each other confused - like is she coming back to pour or should we do it ourselves. We waited a few mins and decided to go for it ourselves. For the hour+ we sat and enjoyed a very delicious wine, she came by about half way to top up waters and other than that, she never checked in. In fact, we went up to the bar counter to pay.
It was honestly quite an odd experience and despite the great bottle of wine, it kinda soured the whole thing for us. Not sure if we'll be back since there are so many great wine bars in Sac (Betty, Nico, etc).