Amaro's Table Downtown

Six Shooter is a Wild Card in the best sense — a rural estate bar where the wine list is short because they're making most of it themselves. If you want depth and variety, look elsewhere; if you want to drink local wine where it was grown, this is the move.

Elements is a better wine list than its size suggests, with a genuinely curious regional spread and a Thursday bottle special that makes the steep markups temporarily irrelevant. Show up on a Thursday, order the Mercer Grenache or the Alain Voge, and you're having a very good night in a city that doesn't always get credit for it.

Coyote Bar & Grill isn't a wine destination, but it doesn't pretend to be one either — fair prices, decent Pacific Northwest representation, and a comfortable room make it a perfectly reasonable place to drink well enough. Send a friend here if they're already going for the food; don't send them here just for the wine.

Maryhill Vancouver is a genuinely good reason to detour into Washington wine country without leaving the city limits — the Klipsun Cab alone justifies a visit. It's not trying to be a destination wine bar, but it earns its place as the best pour on the Vancouver waterfront.

Dediko is a Wild Card in every sense — it's a cozy Georgian café in a strip of downtown Vancouver serving wines most locals have never tasted, and that alone makes it worth a visit. The markups are hard to love, but the experience of drinking actual Georgian wine with actual Georgian food is singular enough that we'd still tell a curious friend to go.

Amaro's Table is the reliable neighborhood wine play — nothing on this list will blow your mind, but nothing will embarrass you either. Send a friend here if they want a decent glass of Oregon Pinot without making a production of it.