Sweet Grapes Wine Bar

I went to Sweet Grapes Wine Bar tonight at 39 Essex St. It’s in a bit of an unusual area; it’s right on the border of Chinatown and the Lower East Side. Not usually where I would expect a wine bar to be located.

It is super, super tiny. There is enough seating for maybe 10 people, but it is very unassuming and quaint. It’s as cute as its name. The place is decorated like an English garden with vines all over the walls as well as bunches of fake grapes. There are some hanging lights and cool lanterns on the wall. The ceilings are made of old, pretty tin, which I think is a nice way to maintain the charm of an old building.

Their wine menu is on a chalkboard on the wall behind the bar, so I didn’t quite catch where all of the wines were from, but from what I do remember seeing, many of the wines were from Europe and California. Sweet Grapes has happy hour specials on some of their wines, but despite that I went with a full priced glass (which was only $8) of Gruner from Austria, since I have been wanting to try it for a while now. This was actually one of the most expensive wines on the list. Glasses were priced between $6 and $9! Incredible.

All I have to say is that if you do stop by Sweet Grapes, do yourself a favor and order this wine. It smelled like crisp green apples and tasted like white peach. It was a little grassy as well with a touch of sweetness. However, the glasses are a little on the small side. So much so that I automatically went to give my glass a good swirl and apparently it was too vigorous for the glass’s stature because some of the wine sloshed over the side. Whoops!

The bartender began to make some microwave popcorn, which smelled awesome. Too bad it wasn’t on the menu because not having a microwave myself, I almost consider it a delicacy and would have dived right in. Just as I was trying to remember what microwave popcorn tasted like, the bartender brought me a bowl! Eeee! I was probably entirely too excited than I should have been. After devouring every little morsel of popcorn, I looked up and found that there were little bowls of popcorn lined up on the bar. It’s the bar snack! A much better alternative than peanuts, if I do say so myself. My glass of Gruner tasted quite good with it. Does anyone have any other great suggestions for what pairs well with popcorn?

Sweet Grapes was a tucked away, neighborly bar, but it felt a little bit like a typical bar rather than a wine bar. Although as you can clearly tell, the popcorn was a huge plus. It is cute though! I give Sweet Grapes a rating of 3.4 out of 5 glasses.

I've emailed Squarespace about this inability to rotate pictures in a post. I'll have this right side up soon enough!

Note the spill from my vigorous swirl

I devoured half the bowl of popcorn before I realized I should take a picture