The food and wine mecca of San Francisco continues to present the fineries of gourmet high-style with the simplicity of exquisite neighborhood casual. This certainly comes in the city's restaurants of all sizes and shapes as part of its neighborhood-based identity. Now comes an abundance of local wine bars, where visitors or residents can experience the tasting rooms of Napa and Sonoma wines, Burgundy and New Zealand grapes, and more. These often funky places are not pretentious, but they are knowledgeable. The connoisseur experience is just down the street, with the world at your fingertips.
Not that wine bars are novel, but they are increasingly more prevalent and certainly more accessible to the unitiated. For a "flight" of small quantities of several wines, you can sample a much wider variety than a single winery's tasting room offers out in the Valley. Clearly these venues provide two different types of entertainment -- to go deeper into a single winery's selections or to go wider by experimenting with new and unexpected options at the city wine bar. Yet, while wineries are pushing sales of bottles to go, wine bars offer comfortable seating encouraging lingering and conversation. As a womantraveler, it's good to have the options.
