Winston-Salem Goes Full Austria, No Apologies
· Winston Salem · Wine Bar / Bottle Shop · Visit Website ↗
Reviewed by the RagingWine Tasting Desk · August 22, 2026
RagingWine reviewed The Caviste’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
You open the list and it's basically an Austrian wine seminar in seven bottles — and we mean that as the highest possible compliment. There's no filler here, no obligatory California Cab to appease the nervous drinker. Someone made deliberate, opinionated choices, and the prices are so low they feel like a clerical error.
The Caviste has gone all-in on Austria, and the edit is tight but genuinely sharp. You've got three different takes on Grüner Veltliner — from Bründlmayer's L+T at $27 to Ott's Am Berg at $32 to the Schplink in a 3-liter bag-in-box at $37, which is a wild and correct thing to stock. The reds lean into Zweigelt and Burgenland blends via Berger and Meinklang, both producers with serious natural-leaning credibility. Claus Preisinger's Rozsa Libre! rounds things out with a skin-contact rosé that most wine bars in much larger cities wouldn't bother carrying.
We don't have confirmed by-the-glass info, and given the bottle shop format, it's possible pours work differently here than at a traditional wine bar. If you can snag a glass of the Meinklang Frizzante Prosa Rosé at the counter, do it — that's exactly the kind of low-intervention fizz you want to start with. Worth asking what's open.
The Bottom Line
The Caviste is doing something genuinely weird for Winston-Salem — a curated, Austria-only bottle shop with prices that should embarrass most restaurant wine lists. If you're even slightly curious about Grüner Veltliner or natural-leaning reds, this is a low-risk, high-reward detour.
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