A First Look at Wine Poste, Bishop Arts' Snob-Free Wine Bar

Bishop Arts has a new wine bar with a personality that fits the neighborhood. Wine Poste is artsy, smart, enthusiastic, but above all easygoing. Don’t come to Wine Poste to be pretentious about your favorite exclusive single-lot vintage. Don’t come to see and be seen. Snobbery is not allowed. This is a casual, fun hang-out spot for people who like wine.

Wine Poste is a neighborhood wine shop first and a bar second. One long wall is lined with a tempting, well-chosen selection of bottles to take home. Instead of Cupcake, Franzia and 500 California chardonnays, you’ll find bargain French imports, affordable sparkling wines made from Austrian riesling, and pinot noir from historic family-owned Oregon vineyards.

The wine bar side of Wine Poste is low-key. The shop features a short, carefully selected list of affordable wines by the glass. That glass list changes with the seasons. Right now, intriguing off-the-beaten-path French wines start at $7.

From noon to 3 p.m. Sundays, Wine Poste has a sparkling wine tasting, with four samples for $10. When we visited, the bubbly came from Spain, Germany and Austria, and the friendly server offered his endearingly geeky opinions on each. (One was good, one in an all-white bottle was very good, but two were merely OK.)

Whenever you go, Wine Poste is a great place to relax. Sit at wooden tables or on the big, comfy front couch, and enjoy the murals that decorate all the walls. Whoever painted these murals clearly accepted a challenge to fit as many wine glasses into the artwork as possible. The shop’s staff, meanwhile, play a series of classic albums on a vinyl record player in the back, but again, they’re not the snobby hipster kind of vinyl enthusiasts. They’re just people who like good music.

That’s the whole appeal of Wine Poste. Like the Wine Therapist in Lakewood, it serves up good glasses in a casual, quiet atmosphere, plus a series of well-chosen bottles you can buy to take home. Best of all, your drink doesn’t come with a side dish of pretentiousness. Wine Poste is a fun, friendly place, and now we have yet another reason to hang out in Bishop Arts.

Wine Poste, 246 W. Davis St., 214-272-3221