Cheap pours, brick walls, zero pretense
Downtown / ASU Campus · Tempe · Wine bar serving Italian- and Mediterranean-influenced cafe fare · Visit Website ↗
Reviewed by the RagingWine Tasting Desk · June 29, 2026
RagingWine reviewed Postino Annex’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 Postino Annex, you half-expect a craft beer menu — it's that kind of renovated-brick, communal-table energy. Then you see twenty wines by the glass starting at nine bucks and the math starts working in your favor. This place isn't trying to be a serious wine destination, but it's trying to be fun and affordable, and it mostly nails it.
The list runs 40 to 50 labels and leans hard on familiar, approachable names across Italy, France, Spain, and domestic U.S. — think La Vieille Ferme rosé and Santa Julia Malbec, not obscure grower Champagnes. There's no deep cellar here, no old-world rarities hiding in the back, and the labels rotate often enough that you can't always count on a specific bottle being there. What you can count on is everything being drinkable, priced fairly, and uncomplicated — which near ASU at noon or 7pm on a Tuesday is often exactly what the moment calls for. The Dow's Tawny Port by the glass is a legitimately nice touch that breaks up the monotony of the usual suspects.
About twenty pours span red, white, rosé, and sparkling — an unusually generous by-the-glass program for a spot at this price point. The $9 floor is real and not a bait-and-switch; most of the interesting stuff lives right there. Rotation keeps things from going totally stale, though don't show up expecting the same list you saw last month.
La Vieille Ferme Rosé — $9/glass
This Côtes du Ventoux rosé retails for $9 a bottle — and Postino is pouring it by the glass at the same price. That's essentially getting the bottle's worth for one pour without the markup math working against you. It's a well-made, food-friendly Provençal-style rosé from the Perrin family, and at this price it's a no-brainer.
Dow's Tawny Port
Most people at Postino are here for the bruschetta-and-rosé combo, so the Dow's Tawny Port by the glass gets overlooked almost entirely. That's a mistake. A pour of properly made Tawny alongside a cheese and charcuterie board is a genuinely satisfying finish to a light meal, and Dow's is a reliable producer that punches above its price class. Nobody at the table next to you is ordering it, which means you should.
House Red Blend (Postino Private Label)
The house red exists to fill a slot on the menu, and it succeeds at that specific goal. But with Santa Julia Malbec and Bogle Petite Sirah both available at $9 or $10 with actual identifiable producers behind them, there's no reason to default to the private-label mystery blend. Spend one dollar more and know what you're drinking.
Bogle Petite Sirah + Bruschetta with roasted red pepper and salami
Bogle's Petite Sirah is inky, a little grippy, and built for something with weight and fat to push back against it. The salami bruschetta hits those marks — cured meat richness, a little acid from the pepper, olive oil rounding it out. Ten dollars a glass for a pairing that actually makes sense is the whole point of being here.
Monday and Tuesday — $25 for a select bottle plus a bruschetta board — effectively a 30 to 40 percent discount on the bottle versus regular list price. It's a national Postino promo but it's a legitimate deal. Show up early; it gets crowded fast.
The Bottom Line
Postino Annex isn't where you go to drink seriously — it's where you go to drink smartly, and there's a difference. With Monday-Tuesday bottle deals, markups that border on generous, and a by-the-glass list that earns its breadth, this is the rare casual spot where the wine program actually respects your wallet.
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Basic Stemmed
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Crowd Pleasers
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