Vino Venue – Wine Tasting in San Francisco

How about a place where you can taste over 100 wines from all over the world? That place is Vino Venue located at 686 Mission Street in San Francisco. We visited Vino Venue on a Saturday evening.

This is a one-of-a-kind tasting bar. Here's how it works. When you enter, you pay for a debit card for an amount you think you will be spending on wine tasting. The next step is to browse the selection and get a feel for the wines you might want to try. Vino Venue divides the wine into sections mostly by varietal type, but some by country, and some by expensive or ultra premium. When you decide on a wine to taste, you place the debit card into the slot, put your wine glass under the dispenser and press the button above it. Almost magically a one-ounce pour is dispensed into your wine glass. Each pour is assigned a cost and that amount is deducted from your debit card after each pour.

You can also sit at the wine bar or a table and order wine by the glass or buy a full bottle of wine. Vino Venue is also a retail wine shop where you can buy any of the wines you enjoyed from your tastings. Next door there is an authentic Italian deli, A.G.Ferrari Foods, where you can order some deli items and bring with you to Vino Venue.

The best part of Vino Venue is the idea of being able to taste so many wines in one spot. For those just beginning to enjoy wine, this offers the best opportunity to get acquainted with different varietals of wine. For the veteran wine drinker, there are many opportunities to taste unusual wines or some very expensive wines you might not normally taste. Finally, it is a great social gathering place to talk about wine or any other topic.

We tasted several wines and found two wines that we both really enjoyed very much, a Corison Gewürztraminer, and a Carter Vineyards Pinot Noir. That's one of the advantages of Vino Venue, finding out what you like or don't like before you spend the big bucks on a bottle. The only downside for us at Vino Venue was the one-once pour. It is just a little bit shy of the amount we like in our glass to judge a wine.

Dinner at Ristorante Umbria

There are several good restaurants within walking distance of Vino Venue. On this night we head off to Ristorante Umbria on 198 Second Street, two blocks from Vino Venue. The restaurant is celebrating its 10th anniversary. Any restaurant in San Francisco that is around for that long has to be doing something right. As far as we know, it is the only San Francisco restaurant featuring authentic Umbrian cuisine. We start our meal with a delicious bruschetta appetizer. For entrées, Janelle has the baked lasagna that is very reminiscent of the lasagna we tasted when we were in Umbra last year. Joe has the osso buco which is oven baked and requires a 20-minute prep time. The dinner is delightful and overall merits rating of a 4.25 on our Five Point Rating scale.

We will return to both Vine Venue and Ristorante Umbria. It has been an enjoyable evening of good food and wine.