Grocery Store Wines, Half-Price Redemption
Taos Plaza Alley · Taos · Mexican bar & grill · Visit Website ↗
Reviewed by the RagingWine Tasting Desk · July 27, 2026
RagingWine reviewed The Alley Cantina’s wine list and gave it The Wild Card — RagingWine’s Vibe-Check rating. How RagingWine reviews wine lists →
Take Vibe Match and we’ll tell you what to order here.
Wingman Metrics
The Alley Cantina is, first and foremost, a bar — a lively, pool-table-having, live-music-playing historic Taos institution where tequila and cold beer are the real point. The wine list feels like an afterthought that someone typed up in about four minutes, and honestly, that's fine. Nobody's coming here for a Burgundy deep-dive.
Eight wines, all by the glass, none by the bottle — and the roster reads like the bottom shelf of a gas station: Woodbridge Cabernet, CK Mondavi Merlot, Sutter Home White Zinfandel. There's zero regional character, zero producer ambition, and not a single wine that would raise an eyebrow at a grocery store checkout. The one curveball is Warre's Warrior Porto, which has no business being this interesting relative to the rest of the list, and yet here it is. If you squint hard enough, this is actually a complete list — red, white, pink, bubbly, and fortified are all accounted for, just with the absolute minimum effort applied to each category.
All eight wines are poured by the glass, priced at $9–$10 a pop — which is basically nothing in 2024. During the daily 5–7pm happy hour, those pours drop to roughly $4.50–$5, at which point arguing about producer pedigree feels genuinely absurd. Rotation is nonexistent; what you see is what you get, every day, forever.
Warre's Warrior Porto — $10
At $10 a glass — or half that during happy hour — Warre's Warrior is a legitimately solid fortified wine from one of the Douro's historic houses. It sticks out on this list like a sports car in a Walmart parking lot, and that's a compliment.
Warre's Warrior Porto
Nobody orders Porto at a New Mexico cantina, which means you will absolutely not be fighting anyone for the last pour. It's the only wine on the list with actual winemaking heritage behind it, and sipping it slowly while a band sets up in the corner is a perfectly valid life choice.
J. Roget Champagne Brut
J. Roget isn't Champagne in any meaningful sense — it's a New York-made bulk sparkling wine that uses the word 'Champagne' on its label because it's grandfathered in under old trade rules. At $9 a glass, you're paying cantina prices for something that costs $6 a bottle at the grocery store. Order a margarita instead.
Woodbridge Chardonnay + Chile Rellenos
The mild oak and soft stone fruit in the Woodbridge Chardonnay won't fight with the roasted poblano or the cheese filling — it's a low-conflict pairing for a low-conflict setting. Don't overthink it.
Every Day — Happy hour runs daily from 5pm–7pm with half-price wines (along with domestic beer and well drinks).
🎲 The Bottom Line
We would never send anyone to The Alley Cantina specifically for the wine, but we'd absolutely send them for the vibe — and if you hit that 5–7pm happy hour, a $5 glass of Porto while a band tunes up is one of Taos's more charming small pleasures. The Wild Card badge isn't for the list quality; it's for the unexpected delight of finding Warre's Warrior in a cantina that also has a pool table.
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