Utah's most serious wine list, surprisingly
Central City · Salt Lake City · French · Visit Website ↗
Updated August 2026
Reviewed by the RagingWine Tasting Desk · April 4, 2026
RagingWine reviewed Bar à Vin’s wine list and gave it The Wild Card — RagingWine’s Vibe-Check rating. How RagingWine reviews wine lists →
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Wingman Metrics
Walking into Bar à Vin, the wine list hits you before the food menu does — 120+ bottles in downtown Salt Lake City is not something you expect to find, and the French bistro backdrop makes it feel like someone actually meant it. The room is warm and tight, the kind of place where the list does the talking. It earns your attention.
The list leans hard into the French canon — Burgundy and Bordeaux anchor things, with Château Montrose Saint-Estèphe and Domaine Jacques Prieur Corton Bressandes Grand Cru showing real ambition. Rhône Valley gets representation too, which keeps things from feeling like a one-note Bordeaux shrine. The California contingent is heavy on household names — Caymus, Silver Oak, Orin Swift Papillon — which reads more like crowd management than curation, but it's hard to fault a wine bar for knowing its audience. Gaps exist in the Southern Hemisphere and anything remotely natural, so don't come here expecting skin-contact Slovenian anything.
Twenty to thirty options by the glass is genuinely impressive for this market — that's a wine bar number, not a restaurant number. The rotation isn't well-documented publicly, so what you'll find poured on a given night is a bit of a mystery, but the breadth of the bottle list suggests the pours should be interesting. We'd push staff to walk you through what's open rather than defaulting to the usual suspects.
Grgich Hills Estate Cabernet Sauvignon — null
Grgich Hills is a Napa benchmark with real history behind it — the kind of bottle that punches well above its typical restaurant markup. On a list heavy with trophy bottles, this one tends to be the most honest price-to-quality trade on the California side.
Domaine Jacques Prieur Corton Bressandes Grand Cru Pinot Noir
Most tables here will be ordering the Caymus or the Silver Oak without blinking. The Prieur Corton Bressandes is Grand Cru Burgundy in a state that rarely stocks it — if you've never had a Premier or Grand Cru Côte de Beaune in the right setting, this is the moment and Bar à Vin is the right room for it.
Caymus Cabernet Sauvignon
Caymus is fine wine, but it's everywhere, it's marked up everywhere, and in a list this ambitious you can do better. The Special Selection commands a premium that rarely feels justified when Château Montrose is sitting a few lines away on the same page.
Château Montrose Saint-Estèphe + Steak frites
Saint-Estèphe Bordeaux is structured and tannic enough to cut through the fat of a properly rested steak, and the bistro context makes this feel exactly like the kind of pairing the place was built for. Classic for a reason.
The Bottom Line
Bar à Vin is doing something genuinely unusual for Salt Lake City — a real wine-forward list in a French bistro setting that doesn't feel like an accident. The markups and the Napa crowd-pleasers hold it back from Rager territory, but as a Wild Card in a market not known for wine ambition, it's absolutely worth the detour.
· Salt Lake City · Steakhouse
STK Salt Lake City has the bones of a wine program but none of the follow-through — three by-the-glass options and a bottle list built around brand recognition rather than quality. Order a cocktail, or spring for the Veuve if you want to feel good about what's in your glass.
Crowd Pleasers
Steep
Basic Stemmed
Rotating Cast
Set & Forget
Acceptable
Sugar House · Salt Lake City · Steakhouse and Seafood with Scandinavian/European Influences
Kimi's earns its reputation as one of Salt Lake City's better nights out, and the wine program has real bones — a sommelier, a thoughtful Italian-leaning list, and proper glassware. Just go in knowing the markups are aggressive on the bubbles, anchor yourself to the Riesling if you're watching the spend, and let the room do the rest of the work.
Solid Range
Steep
Varietal Specific
Knowledgeable & Friendly
Occasional
Proper
9th & 9th · Salt Lake City · Middle Eastern
Mazza isn't a wine destination, but it's doing something genuinely interesting by building a list around Lebanese producers that actually belong on the table with this food. If you're in Salt Lake City and want to drink something you won't find anywhere else in town, this is worth a detour.
Small but Thoughtful
Fair
Basic Stemmed
Willing but Green
Set & Forget
Acceptable
Downtown · Salt Lake City · Japanese and Sushi
Takashi is a great restaurant with a wine list that's just along for the ride — functional, safe, and a little overpriced relative to what you get. Go for the sushi, order the Cloudy Bay or the Oregon Pinot, and don't expect the wine program to keep pace with the kitchen.
Plays It Safe
Steep
Basic Stemmed
Willing but Green
Set & Forget
Acceptable
Downtown · Salt Lake City · Seafood and Raw Bar
Market Street Oyster Bar is a reliable spot for wine if you calibrate your expectations accordingly — this is a crowd-pleaser list built for a crowd-pleaser room, and it mostly delivers. Send a friend here for oysters and a glass of Sauvignon Blanc, not for a wine education.
Crowd Pleasers
Steep
Basic Stemmed
Willing but Green
Set & Forget
Acceptable
Cottonwood Heights · Salt Lake City · Seafood and Steakhouse
Market Street Grill Cottonwood is a dependable neighborhood anchor with a wine list that does exactly what it needs to — nothing more. Send a friend here for the oysters and the Sonoma-Cutrer; just don't send them expecting to discover anything new.
Plays It Safe
Steep
Basic Stemmed
Willing but Green
Set & Forget
Acceptable
Downtown Telluride / San Juan Avenue · Telluride · French
La Marmotte isn't trying to be a wine bar — it's a cozy French bistro that happens to have a genuinely thoughtful, all-French, all-glass list that punches well above the Telluride baseline. If you're eating duck confit in the mountains and someone hands you JL Chave Syrah for $26, you say yes.
Small but Thoughtful
Fair
Basic Stemmed
Willing but Green
Set & Forget
Acceptable
Downtown Napa · Napa · French
Angele is a genuinely good neighborhood anchor in one of the world's most wine-saturated zip codes — fair pricing, familiar producers, and a waterfront setting that earns its keep. It won't challenge you, but it won't disappoint you either, and that's not nothing.
Solid Range
Fair
Basic Stemmed
Willing but Green
Set & Forget
Acceptable
Yountville · Napa · French
Bistro Jeanty isn't your typical Napa wine list — and that's exactly the point. The fortified and dessert program alone is worth the visit, with markups that are shockingly fair for this zip code. Come for the duck confit, stay for the Madeira.
Small but Thoughtful
Fair
Basic Stemmed
Willing but Green
Set & Forget
Acceptable
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