The 91 Best Wine Bars in the United States

The natural wine list here won a James Beard Award, and the Michelin star belongs to the kitchen, which tells you this Williamsburg bar is doing two things at once and doing neither halfway. The room is famously small and the wait is famously brutal, but Nick Curtola's seasonal menu follows its own logic, landing somewhere between a great wine bar snack and something you'll think about for weeks. James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem is a co-owner, which explains the playlist.

A converted church sanctuary in East Nashville, which at least explains the soaring ceilings and the sense that something meaningful is happening here. The wine list runs over a hundred bottles, and the bar anchoring the room doubles as a social hub for groups settling in for the night. The kitchen plays it loose, moving between bar snacks and more serious plates. Chef Colby Rasavong picked up a Food and Wine Best New Chefs nod in 2025, and the Times put it on their restaurant list that same year.

Bottles line every wall and stack to the ceiling on Doyers Street, which tells you what you're in for at this tiny Chinatown wine bar before you've even sat down. The team pairs a well-chosen, offbeat list with smart modern Chinese food, and the room fills fast enough that tables spill into the alley. It won the James Beard Award for Best New Restaurant in 2026, which the elbow-to-elbow crowd seems to have already known for a while.

A pocket-sized wine bar in South Miami where a short, rotating menu does more than most restaurants twice its size. The kitchen counter is the best seat in the house, which is saying something given how few seats there are. The team behind it landed on Bon Appétit's best new restaurants list and The New York Times' Miami roundup, and a James Beard semifinalist nod followed. Small plates, natural pours, and a room that fills up fast.

A backyard patio that somehow feels like a secret, even though Sonoma Plaza is right there. Valley is a neighborhood wine bar and bottle shop where the list leans into organic and biodynamic bottles from corners of California you haven't thought to explore yet. The short menu of small plates is built for sharing and changes often, with a Michelin Bib Gourmand and a James Beard semifinalist nod confirming the kitchen punches well above its modest ambitions.

The restroom walls are lined with illustrated wine descriptions, which tells you exactly what kind of neighborhood restaurant this is. A cozy Columbia Heights pasta house and wine bar, Reveler's Hour runs a rotating slate of seasonal Italian small plates under arched ceilings and muted green tiles. The sommelier who co-owns the place steers you toward bottles you've never encountered, and the housemade pasta is the thing to build an order around.

Named for Lucian Freud, this 40-seat wine restaurant and bookshop in Buckhead stocks art and fashion volumes alongside a list serious enough to earn a James Beard semifinalist nod for its beverage program. The seasonal American menu runs to ricotta gnudi and caviar-topped omelets, the kind of food that pairs naturally with whatever the wine director opens next. Shelves full of books for sale make lingering feel practically obligatory.

Desert-toned walls and a condensed, always-shifting wine list set the mood at this neo-bistro and wine bar on Seventh Street. The team pulls from old and new world bottles for both pours and a rotating spritz selection, while small plates from the kitchen give you a reason to stay for another glass. A James Beard semifinalist for Best New Bar, it draws the kind of crowd that actually talks to the table next to them.

Pascaline Lepeltier, one of a handful of Master Sommeliers in the world, built the wine list here, and it shows: back vintages, unexpected producers, prices that don't require a quiet moment alone with your bank app. The food runs from composed salads to fresh pasta, all of it seasonal and sharper than the "wine bar snacks" framing might suggest. A James Beard nominee for its beverages program, and sitting at number 29 on the Times' 100 Best list.

A wine bar in Middleburg horse country with over 70 pours by the glass, though the food holds its own against the list. Snacks lean indulgent, and the bigger plates, duck confit, lobster curry, hanger steak au poivre, are serious enough that calling this a wine bar starts to feel like underselling it. The chef's cocktail policy runs "no fru fru," which apparently still leaves room for mezcal, Chartreuse, and Aperol in one glass.

The team behind Oxalis opened this Clinton Hill wine bar as a casual second act, and the kitchen takes it as seriously as the cellar. Both lean Spanish: natural wines from small producers, simple seafood, grilled toast, and vegetable plates that hold their own. The bar and open kitchen anchor a cozy room that fills up fast, so arrive early or embrace the wait with a glass of something zippy.

Pork sisig made with pig's head, sizzling on a cast-iron at brunch, gives you a sense of how seriously Ed Kenney takes not taking things too seriously. This Kaimuki wine bar and restaurant runs on a modern Hawaiian sensibility, where lūʻau leaves show up in the fresh fish and mapo gravy lands on a biscuit. Kenney was a James Beard semifinalist, and the room fills with locals who already know the menu but still take a minute to choose.

On some nights, the menu at this tiny Lower East Side wine bar runs almost entirely on toast, sometimes composed, sometimes a hunk of baguette left for you to figure out. The kitchen gestures toward France and Vietnam without committing to either, and the eggs mayo spiked with Maggi and trout roe has caused some embarrassing arguments about egg dishes. Stools, minimal lighting, a short pours list. Bon Appétit named it one of America's best new restaurants.

The wine list has a dedicated section for aged Madeira, which tells you something about the seriousness of the operation. This moody Poncey-Highland wine bar holds a Michelin selection and landed on Bon Appétit's best new bars list, but the kitchen pulls its own weight with snacks, shareable plates, and evening mains that feel seasonal without being precious. A James Beard semifinalist for Best New Bar, it draws the kind of crowd that actually reads the back label.

A converted firehouse turned wine bar with a retail shop stocking over 200 bottles you can also drink on the spot. The menu rotates around whatever the chef's neighbor harvests from the garden across the street, which keeps things genuinely seasonal in a way most places only claim. The backyard runs to lawn chairs and picnic blankets, with DJs on weekends. It landed on the New York Times Restaurant List and Bon Appétit's Best New Restaurants in the same year.

The wine list leans natural, the cocktails are craft, and the menu changes often enough that regulars rarely order the same thing twice. Copper Common is a wine bar and restaurant in downtown Salt Lake City, from the team behind the Copper Onion next door, and the kitchen ranges widely, pairing sharply drawn flavors without making a fuss about it. Salt Lake Magazine named it one of the city's top restaurants.

Bookshelves, wine bottles, and houseplants do most of the decorating at this cozy West Asheville wine bar, which manages to feel like someone's living room without feeling precious about it. Coffee and breakfast sandwiches run through the morning; evenings pivot to oysters, crudo, and a glass of something natural. A James Beard Semifinalist for Outstanding Wine and Other Beverages Program, it draws the kind of regulars who never seem to be in a hurry to leave.

A glass-enclosed pasta room visible from the dining floor sets the tone at this Italian wine bar in Wedgewood-Houston, where the look is sleek and industrial and the menu stays concise enough to actually read. House-made pastas anchor the middle of the card, soft serve sundaes close it out, and the kitchen treats both with equal seriousness. The New York Times put it on their Nashville list, and the Michelin Guide has selected it too.

A neighborhood wine bistro a block from the Hermosa Beach strand, Vin Folk has a Michelin Bib Gourmand and the kind of regulars who look slightly smug about knowing it's there. The menu roams globally, with shareable plates that lean on good technique without announcing themselves. Reservations are genuinely worth planning around, which for a casual wine bar says something the room doesn't need to say out loud.

Fried chicken and Chartreuse slushies share a menu here, which tells you everything about the spirit of this neighborhood bistro on Grand Avenue. The team behind the Morris in San Francisco brought their seafood-and-ferment instincts across the Bay, and the result is a wine bar with exposed brick, a vine-covered back patio, and wood-fired mussels that make the whole premise feel inevitable. The San Francisco Chronicle named it among the top 100 restaurants in the Bay Area.

Magnums of natural wine lean toward empty glasses and conversations bounce off metallic high-tops in a low-ceilinged room that feels more like someone's dinner party than a restaurant. This Lower East Side wine bar runs on eclectic small plates and a list that skews biodynamic and organic, with a vibe that's deliberately, unapologetically Parisian. The New York Times gave it two stars, and Wine Enthusiast put it on its Forward 50 list.

A bread house and wine bar born from an actual marriage, which is either romantic or the most efficient way to divide labor ever conceived. The dishes read simple but arrive with quiet technique underneath, and a dedicated section of chilled reds by the glass gives the wine list a personality of its own. The room is casual without being careless, and the New York Times put it on their Nashville list.

The snails are always on the menu, served in-shell with garlic confit and cashew miso butter, which tells you everything about this natural wine bar's sense of humor and ambition at once. The chef came up through serious kitchens, and the small plates land with a precision that the unfussy Shattuck Ave room does nothing to announce. The wine list runs deep on natural bottles, locals fill the parklet most nights, and the Michelin Guide gave it a Bib Gourmand.

The rotisserie spit is the organizing principle here: Filipino chicken inasal and pork belly lechon anchor a menu that also runs deep on vegan and gluten-free options, all of it designed to land at a table without a scary bill. Lasita is a natural wine bar tucked into Chinatown's Far East Plaza, and the glowing wine fridge holds Sicilian skin-contact, chilled Spanish reds, and sparkling Portuguese whites. A Monday-night glass or a family dinner both make sense, which is harder to pull off than it sounds.

Chenin is a tiny wine bar tucked inside The Siren Hotel, pouring natural and biodynamic bottles to a room lit softly enough to forgive anyone's skin-contact experiments. Salty snacks and a mortadella sandwich piled onto focaccia keep the evening going longer than planned. Seats are scarce, so arrive when the doors open. It was a James Beard Award nominee for Best New Bar.

A natural wine bar on East Seventh Street where the list leans hard into Eastern Europe and the sommeliers can talk about it all night. The food menu is short and rotates, which keeps the regulars genuinely curious. Michelin gave it a Bib Gourmand, and the room, split between a communal high-top and a quieter dining area, fills up fast enough that a reservation is less optional than it sounds.

Marble bar, soft jazz, and a wine list that quietly suggests someone here knows what they're doing. This intimate wine bar in Hastings-on-Hudson draws a Westchester crowd that has clearly tired of driving into the city for a civilized night out. The kitchen punches well above its zip code, with a short, focused menu that earns the Bib Gourmand. Come ready to linger; the servers seem to expect it.

The kitchen here runs without a proper gas stove, which makes the lamb ragu over house-made spätzle even more worth puzzling over. Sami & Susu is a narrow Mediterranean wine bar on Orchard Street, with a short seasonal menu that wanders the Middle East, a natural wine list, and a punky soundtrack. The Michelin Guide gave it a Bib Gourmand, and the staff seem genuinely unbothered by how much you order.

The sunchoke doughnuts with XO gouda are reportedly un-removable from the menu, which tells you something about this Davis Square wine bar. The list leans toward small producers and natural winemakers, and the staff actually know it. Small plates from the kitchen are the kind of thing a food scientist might dream up on a generous budget. A James Beard Outstanding Bar semifinalist for 2026.

Rebel Rebel is a tiny natural wine bar tucked into the shipping-container-sized stalls of Bow Market, and it works as a salon as much as a place to drink. Talks with food writers, chocolate pairings, and a Beaujolais Nouveau party where pot-au-feu comes out of a cauldron are all on the calendar. It's casual, the glasses are small-producer pours, and it has been a James Beard semifinalist for wine and beverage programs.

Barrels and wine bottles line the walls here, and the shop and tasting bar out front make clear that wine is the whole point. Cooper's Hawk is a full-service American restaurant with a globally roaming menu, the kind of place suburban date-nighters discover and then return to every few weeks. The food swings from Asian-inflected starters to churrasco and braised short ribs, with pasta filling the middle ground for anyone who can't decide.

The fried shrimp comes with aioli, the zucchini blossoms are stuffed, and the whole thing sits next door to Chez Panisse, which is either coincidence or not. Alice Waters is behind this too, a casual wine bar where the farm-to-table reverence is intact but the menu reads lighter and less ceremonious than its famous neighbor. The New York Times gave it two stars in 2026, which for a neighborhood spot serving butter beans is a lot to live down.

The address reads like an apartment number because it is one, a converted unit that functions as an intimate wine bar with a short, serious list leaning toward small producers from both hemispheres. You can stop in for a glass and a charcuterie board or commit to the multicourse tasting menu, where the kitchen moves through things like Hokkaido scallop with red curry and duck cassoulet. The wine and the food compete for your attention in roughly equal measure.

A neighborhood wine bar on Worth Street that shares a cellar with the fine-dining temple next door, which tells you something about how seriously the team takes the bottle list. The food goes well past bar snacks: salmon tartare with potato chips for crunch, pasta shaped like a crown and stuffed with lobster in dashi broth. Tribeca locals have clearly noticed, and the room fills accordingly.

Taan is a Thai restaurant and wine bar on West Augusta in Humboldt Park, where the menu rotates with whatever produce shows up and noodles are conspicuously absent. Fish, meat, and vegetables get cooked in traditional Thai sauces instead, with wings glazed in fish sauce caramel and a small, shifting wine list that includes bottles from Logan Square's Middle Brow. Expect the kind of neighborhood spot where nobody asks you to dress up.

The focaccia comes from Liguria Bakery down the street and goes into a small oven behind the bar, where the staff arrange sandwiches with a pizza peel like a game of Tetris. This old North Beach cafe has been around forever, its walls dense with sunwashed photos and Italian art. Order the meatball on focaccia and take a table by the window, where Washington Square gives the whole thing the feeling of a city that still knows how to sit still.

A natural wine bar tucked into a downtown alley, Goodtime Bar is about the size of a large walk-in closet, which somehow only adds to the energy. The formula is simple: zippy, low-intervention pours and creative small plates that pull from all over, including a bucatini seasoned with Thai tom yum. The San Francisco Chronicle put it on their Top 100 Bay Area restaurants list, and the overflow crowd spilling out front on any given night suggests people got the memo.

A small wine bar in Lawrenceville with a simple bistro feel, The Vandal runs a rotating menu built around Pennsylvania ingredients, so what's on the plate depends on when you show up. The natural wine list skews interesting, and the cocktails hold their own alongside it. It handles the full range of occasions, date night through solo Tuesday dinner, without seeming to try particularly hard at any of them.

A black-and-white mural anchors the room at this dim, cozy wine bar on Ninth Street, where the vibe leans more European side street than desert Southwest. The wine list pulls from around the world, the staff will happily talk you through it, and the meat and cheese boards give you something to do with your hands while they do. The kind of place you walk into for one glass and leave two hours later.

This is a narrow natural-wine bar near Downtown Crossing, the sort of place that introduced a lot of Boston to tinned fish and has been quietly smug about it since. The list is long and a little nerdy, but the bartenders will talk you through it without making you feel graded. Half bottles of nearly everything let you change your mind twice. It was a James Beard semifinalist for its wine program, and on Wednesdays there are fancy hot dogs.

Bodega is a North Beach wine bar that spends most of the week doing wine bar things and then, on Saturdays at 9am, abruptly becomes a burrito stand. The breakfast burrito comes stuffed with chorizo, eggs, avocado, and potatoes crisp enough to hear across Washington Square, and it sells out, so the alarm clock is part of the order. Sleep through it and their Cow Hollow sister bar, Celeste, serves the same thing on Sundays.

Four drink menus sorted into categories like "Underappreciated & Misunderstood" and "Rustic & Complex" tell you exactly what kind of wine bar this is. Root & Flower is a cozy, chic spot tucked in Vail Village where fifty wines pour by the glass and the tapas menu is substantial enough to skip a proper dinner after a day on the mountain. Walk-ins welcome, though groups of four or more should book through Resy.

Eatóri Market is a casual Italian-leaning cafe and grocery on Capitol Park, where the dining room grew into the old grocery space and the groceries moved next door into a former nail bar. The pours of wine are generous, the menu is the kind you can eat in a sweater, and the patio is built for watching Capitol Park go by. Reservations run through Resy, which feels fancy for a place that also sells you pantry staples.

The Royce is a wine bar and bottle shop near Grand Circus Park, where walnut shelving, globe lights, and library ladders make buying a bottle feel faintly like checking out a book. A 12-seat bar anchors the first floor, with cured meats and cheeses to keep the pours company. Over 300 bottles are for sale, plenty by the glass, and classes are on offer for anyone who'd rather understand the list than guess at it.

Vino Carta is a wine bar that doubles as a bottle shop at the north end of Little Italy, so you can drink a glass here or walk out with something for later. The shelves run to hundreds of bottles, heavy on natural, orange, and sparkling from small family producers. There's a monthly wine club, plus food pop-ups and the occasional DJ night, which is a lot of ambition for something that started as a place to buy wine.

A U-shaped bar, gold touches, and pink drapery tucked inside a Highland Park strip mall, which is either charming or deeply on-brand depending on your feelings about Highland Park. Coupes is a Champagne and wine bar with a serious poured-glass selection covering French bottles, Crémant, Blanc de Noirs, and Texas pours alongside cocktails for anyone not yet ready to commit to bubbles entirely.

Shelves of wine bottles line every wall of this small, happily unpretentious wine bar tucked into a strip mall on Indian School. The vibe is couch-and-conversation, the kind of place where you sit down next to strangers and somehow end up closing it down with them. The food menu runs to pimento cheese and Moroccan spiced meatballs, which is a perfectly reasonable way to soak up a second pour. Phoenix New Times named it one of the top 100 bars in the city.

Warm booth seating, a patio with live music some nights, and servers who can actually talk you through the list make this Evanston wine bar feel more like a neighborhood living room than a tasting room. Whites, reds, rosés, and cocktails share menu space with charcuterie and flatbread pizzas, so a glass rarely stays lonely. The kind of place where a quick drink tends to turn into a longer evening without anyone minding.

Roses in vases, white wicker chairs, and a playlist parked somewhere between Britney and Beyoncé set the tone at this wine bar in Scottsdale's Old Town. The menu runs through tasting flights, wine cocktails, and frosés, with flatbreads and avocado toast for ballast. The New York Times once named Scottsdale the second-most-popular bachelorette destination in the country, and Wine Girl is doing its part to keep that ranking intact.

A dark, sleek wine bar in Old Town Scottsdale pouring from Arizona's Willcox region, which Wine Enthusiast has been calling the next Napa with a straight face for years. Co-owner Pavle Milic also runs the beverage program at Charleen Badman's FnB, so the pedigree is real. Bar staff are genuinely gregarious about helping you navigate a glass or flight, while regulars who never need to ask fill the other stools.

A bar that closes at ten, and that's the whole point. The Joy Lush Club is a low-key neighborhood wine and beer bar with 16 taps, a serious wine list, live music, and food trucks rotating through. You can even take a bottle home on your way out. It draws the kind of crowd that wants a proper drink without the performance of a late night. Think comfortable chairs, zero pretension, and somewhere to be by morning.

A converted cottage on McDowell Road that smells faintly of old rugs and good intentions, Sauvage is a natural wine bar and bottle shop where the list leans toward obscure regions and the staff will talk you through all of it. Charcuterie and tinned fish are always on hand, and local chefs occasionally pop up to cook. Esquire named it one of the best bars in America, which the room, unhurried and candlelit, seems entirely unbothered by.

A wine bar in RiNo that keeps fried chicken and tinned fish on the menu alongside Khikhvi, Nerello Mascalese, and a Mencía from Oregon that has no business being that good. The list leans hard into natural, biodynamic, and small-production bottles, and the staff can talk you through all of it without making you feel like a student. Grape nerds and people who just want a glass with snacks coexist peacefully here.