My favorite types of wine bar experience are opposites. The first — sitting at the bar when it’s quiet — invites contemplative questions and long-winded answers, if the person working on the other side is amenable. Sipping slowly, I try to learn whatever they’ll tell me about what’s in the glass.
The second is too loud for such civilized things. In a lively crowd, the bottles are shared among friends old and new. I might not even know which wine is in my glass, let alone study it.
Since Bar Renée opened in downtown Burlington on April 14, I’ve experienced it both ways. Owner Alex Leopold loves a nerdy question, and he’s good at throwing a party.
“It’s all just for fun, and we’re here to create joy and more life downtown.” Alex Leopold
His natural wine bar and bottle shop took over for the short-lived Other Half next to Mr. Mikes in the midst of Main Street’s construction zone. Bar Renée is the first of three such places set to open in Burlington this spring, with Wilder Wines‘ new bar and shop on College Street and La Reprise in the old Dedalus space planned for later in May.
The timing of the wine bar wave and the endless construction affecting the block could have been a source of frustration to Leopold, 34. He’d been seeking a location since moving to Burlington three years ago from California’s Bay Area with his wife, Claire, who helps behind the scenes. But instead, he expressed optimism, pointing to the rising profile of Vermont’s homegrown wine scene and the helpfulness of the S.D. Ireland crew during Bar Renée’s renovation from a black box into a bright, welcoming space.
“Alex is a very positive, rational individual,” Claire said, coming in from squeegeeing a film of dust off the glass door.
As someone who’s waited for this kind of moment in Vermont’s natural wine scene, I share Alex’s heartened outlook: It’s nice to give people a new reason to go downtown. And if the Queen City can support 20 dive and college bars, all serving the same beer-and-a-shot combo, why not a handful of wine bars?
With a small head start on the other two, Bar Renée is carving out its niche. Hours start early, and not just for the bottle shop. The first time I walked in was noon on a Wednesday, right at opening. Alex was behind the bar wearing a T-shirt from Brumaire, a long-running East Bay natural wine fair. Claire sat at one end of the bar, working on her laptop.
The seats around me soon filled up, and the ambience felt very European. Or, more accurately, like Ordinaire, the industry-leading Oakland, Calif., natural wine bar that Alex previously managed and cites as his main inspiration for Bar Renée.
Ordinaire has always been a place where wine is fun. My brother lives in the East Bay, and I make a point to go every time I visit — especially around Thanksgiving, when the shop hosts a packed West Coast Nouveau party that spills out onto the street.
At Bar Renée, I immediately recognized Ordinaire’s DNA: all natural wine, which Alex described as “pure jus, nothing added, nothing taken away.” The farming is organic at a minimum, he said. Only a third of the wines by the glass have sulfur added, and probably even fewer of the bottles for retail sale.
“Real wine,” Alex summarized, before hopping briefly on his soapbox: “It’s often missed that these are all farmers first and winemakers second.”
The large chalkboard menu behind the bar is a nod to Ordinaire, too. After a minute of study, I ordered a glass of Jalu, a grape-apple coferment from Fable Farm Fermentory in Barnard. It was alive as Alex poured it from the tap, bubbling with a jewel-red foam that threatened to jump out of the glass.
I’d chosen the lower-alcohol coferment partly because it was noon and partly because I’d never seen it on tap. On a return visit, I was happy to see that Jalu had moved from the small yet thoughtful “beer and cider” category of the menu to the “bubbles” section of the main wine list, giving it some mainstream cred.
Glass in hand, I started chatting with the Leopolds and other customers at the bar about the construction elephant outside the window. The conversation moved on to mutual hatred of Yelp reviews, peppered with those nerdy questions I love:
What are the “grey grapes” mentioned on the Jalu label? Fable Farm’s translation for “gris,” like the hybrid Frontenac gris used in that coferment.
Is the “natural wine” term overused? It’s a little broad, and it’s been taken advantage of.
[Looking at the menu.] What’s a wine shot? Exactly what it sounds like: a shot glass full of wine, dealer’s choice.
The shots come from bottles that have been open for a while or have what Alex called “challenging” characteristics — a common criticism of natural wines, which some might take as far as “funky” or “flawed.”
The shot option also shows Bar Renée’s playful side. “It’s not all meant to be swirled and contemplated,” Alex said with a chuckle.
“The wine industry can be intimidating, and I want it to be a little more for everybody,” he continued, noting that Bar Renée recently hosted a group of soon-to-graduate students who so enjoyed trying different wines that they decided to skip the party they were pregaming for.
“It’s all just for fun, and we’re here to create joy and more life downtown,” he said.
Part of that approach is affordable pricing. At $8, the Jalu was the cheapest option on the chalkboard, but every glass was less than $14. Bottles were all under $45 — roughly the cost of three glasses.
Right now, the bar offers almost every bottle that’s available on the retail shelves at a flat-rate markup, with bottles as low as $27 — a figure almost unheard of at bars and restaurants, at least for something worth drinking. (The two spaces legally must be licensed separately, so what’s available to drink on premises may change with inventory in the future, Alex said).
The retail area lacks shelf talkers or labels beyond prices scribbled on the bottles with a silver marker.
“It’s very stark,” Alex said. “And that’s to invite a conversation.”
If you ask, he’ll point out that the stock is organized by geography instead of variety. French wines abound — they’re his first love — but you won’t find Sancerre, since there are few natural winemakers in the appellation and the most prominent was publicly canceled three years ago. Instead, Bar Renée’s small, well-educated staff points customers to white wines from Cheverny and the Loire Valley.
Quite a few of the wines have never been sold in Vermont before. Alex takes considerable effort to order wines from out-of-state distributors, a process another wine shop owner described as “a pain in the butt.”
I heard that comment while perusing the shelves at Bar Renée’s Industry Night party on Sunday, May 4. A group of friends and I had joined folks from Frankie’s, May Day, Salt & Bubbles, the Wise Fool, and other local hot spots.
At night, the bar had a warm glow that mimicked the feeling you get after drinking a glass of Laurent Bénard la Clé des Sept Arpents Champagne — which we did, right away. Later, disembodied hands offered pours through the gaps between bodies: that crisp not-Sancerre Cheverny, a juicy Beaujolais and even a fragrant, floral ale from Wunderkammer Biermanufaktur in the Northeast Kingdom.
The night felt like time traveling to pre-COVID-19 — or my life then, anyway. I moved back to Burlington from Brooklyn only six months before the world shut down, which gave me no time to miss the natural wine bars I’d frequented in the city. Casual spots, where you’d shove too many people around a tiny table and split bottles, and maybe, if you were enough of a regular and celebrating something pretty cool, they’d let you saber a bottle inside. (Thanks, Ten Bells!)
Like many of those bars — and the French caves à manger after which they’re modeled — Bar Renée keeps food simple: snacks meant to complement the wine. This isn’t a dinner stop, though they’ll let you bring in a slice from next door.
The not-quite-kitchen visible behind the bar is stocked with olives ($6), sardine pâté ($11), and a cool selection of cheeses, many from Vermont and Québec. Alex’s first industry job was as a cheesemonger in Cambridge, Mass., and cheese is another of his favorite subjects. The selection changes frequently, and specifics don’t appear on the menu, so be sure to ask what’s available.
We ordered a cheese and charcuterie board ($23) with wedges from Westminster West’s Parish Hill Creamery and Does’ Leap in East Fairfield; 5th Quarter‘s melt-in-your-mouth mortadella; and a mountain of bread. As with the wines earlier in the evening, hands showed up from nowhere to grab a snack. A piece of mortadella grazed my ear, then muffled a “sorry” from the friend standing behind me. “No prob,” I replied, mouth full of cheese.
We ended the night with only one thing left to try: a round of wine shots ($3 each).
Claire gave directions as she handed over the tiny glasses: “They’re for shooting, not sipping,” she said, grinning widely. “I’ll tell you what it is after you drink it.”
We cheers-ed, downed the shots and then learned we’d drunk Ruth Lewandowski Wines’ Cuvée Zero, “maybe past its prime,” Claire added.
Appropriately for the wine industry’s least-serious blind tasting, nobody cared.
Bar Renée by the Numbers
As Burlington’s wine bar wave rushes in this spring, here’s a snapshot of what Bar Renée brings to town, from its retail selection to its almost head-to-toe renovation.
- Different wines for sale in the retail shop: 190 and rising
- Number of those wines that are gamay: 18
- Retail selections from Vermont (wine and cider): 12
- Wines by the glass: nine
- Non-wine options at the bar: four beer, four cider, six nonalcoholic
- Cheese options: six
- Types of tinned fish: five
- Number of seats: seven at the bar, 40 total
- Hardware used in the DIY renovation: 4,000-plus nails, 375 screws, 12-plus gallons of paint
- Pairs of googly eyes left on a paper towel dispenser in the bathroom from the bar’s previous life: one
The original print version of this article was headlined “Naturally Fun | Bar Renée takes a less-than-serious approach to a seriously unique wine list”
This article appears in May 14-20, 2025.
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