When I walked into Wilder Wines‘ new location on Burlington’s College Street on opening day, I had a flashback. It was T. Rugg’s Tavern, July 2021. Sipha Lam was hosting a packed pop-up — one I later described in this paper as “somewhere between a collective sigh of relief and full-on bacchanalia.” That night, as Lam poured natural wines into pint glasses for a who’s who of Vermont winemakers and restaurant people, I thought, Man, I really hope she opens a wine bar someday.
Now she has. And it’s beautiful.
Four and a half years after launching her original shop on Cherry Street, Lam, 35, moved Wilder Wines two blocks south. There, she expanded retail offerings and added a 25-seat wine bar, with plush chairs inviting guests to linger and people-watch through the floor-to-ceiling windows, as I have on several occasions since it opened on May 16.
Now, as in the previous space, Lam is focused on making wine accessible, not intimidating. The shop’s popular $20-and-under shelf is even bigger than it was in its first iteration, and nothing on the bar’s by-the-glass menu is more than $14. You can ball out if you want, choosing a Mexican or Japanese wine from the bottle list or a $178 grand cru grower Champagne. But, at least in wine terms, Wilder Wines is overwhelmingly affordable.
That’s been key to Lam’s success so far, along with her immense enthusiasm for the wines she stocks. A couple of years ago, I stopped bringing a shopping list to Wilder. Instead, I buy whatever Lam’s most excited about that day. (It’s often a chilled red.)
Lam is focused on making wine accessible, not intimidating.
The natural wine scene in Burlington hadn’t quite bubbled to the surface when, in March 2021, Lam opened her initial 400-square-foot store, the first one dedicated entirely to wines from small, organic growers who work without additives in their vineyards and cellars. In that shoebox of a shop, she had an outsize impact on how the scene has developed.
Her monthly wine club — a good deal at $40 for two bottles — is approaching 200 members. National outlets such as Wine Enthusiast and beverage industry website Punch have listed Wilder Wines among the best shops in the country, noting its neighborhood feel and support of Vermont producers alongside low- and no-intervention wines from around the world.
Now, the Burlington-area natural wine scene is as explosive as an overheated bottle of pét-nat. Essex’s Salt & Bubbles Wine Bar and Market, Vergennes’ 10 Green Street, and Winooski’s Specs and Standing Stone Wines are all both shops and bars, though the last two aren’t exclusively focused on natural wine. And Wilder is one of three natural wine bars to open this spring in Burlington: Bar Renée is just a block away on Main Street, and La Reprise has filled the Dedalus-size hole in the South End.
Lam, who has been working toward opening her bar for several years, views the trend as a net positive.
“The more people we can get to drink wine, talk about natural wine, support the growers and support businesses downtown, the better,” she said.
As a first-generation American who grew up in Burlington, she has a vested interest in its downtown.
“The city was my playground,” she said fondly. “After school at Edmunds, I’d go to Nectar’s and get gravy fries from the takeout window.”
She started her restaurant career in the Queen City, too, at the now-closed Penny Cluse Café in 2010. Lam found her passion for natural wine during a four-year stint in Boston. Back in Burlington in 2016, she worked at Honey Road and started planning her small, curated shop, all while living downtown.
Opening that shop — and then the bar — in another city never occurred to Lam, despite growing public sentiment that Burlington “isn’t the same” or is “unsafe,” Lam said.
“Part of it is stubbornness,” she continued. “When I hear people spread this narrative, it makes me more determined to stay, push back and draw people into town. I’m going to be part of the solution.”
The new location was half funded through the Burlington Revolving Loan Program, which offers zero-interest loans to established businesses such as Wilder. The other half came from a successful crowdfunding campaign. Lam sold $34,000 worth of gift cards for future purchases — which included a 15 percent discount — between late January and the May opening.
Not much has changed on the retail side with the move, Lam said. Mainly, the $20-and-under shelf has grown, and there’s a lot more elbow room. The shop is open daily, even when the bar is closed on Sundays. On Thursdays, Wilder hosts free tastings.
The real star of the new spot is the bar. Designed by Sara Manning and built by Neil Berry of Waitstown Builders, it’s one of Burlington’s most unique dining or drinking spaces.
Long gone is the ocean-blue box of the Tinkering Turtle toy shop, the space’s previous occupant. In its place are pops of red, green and a more subtle blue. Furnishings are a playful mix of IKEA, Facebook Marketplace finds and custom pieces, such as statement lampshades by Alexa Rivera of WOVN.COUNTRY and a mural by Alex Labriola, who has done all the branding for Wilder Wines.
“I imagined it to be really minimalist,” Lam said, chuckling. “We didn’t go minimal. It just felt right.”
The menu isn’t minimalist, either. On top of 10 rotating by-the-glass options, you can get a lambrusco spritz and a kalimotxo — a quizzical yet refreshing Spanish cocktail that’s half red wine, half Mexican Coke. Food options include “things on toast,” tinned fish, and an over-the-top (but just right) Pile O Chips, draped with cured bresaola, Manchego cheese and pickled, slightly spicy piparra peppers.
Wine retailers in Vermont all pull from the same distributor inventory. To distinguish Wilder’s by-the-glass list, Lam and assistant general manager Ariel Moss, a sommelier who previously worked at Dedalus, try to pour things that are new to the state or not being offered elsewhere. Recent favorites, Lam said, include a former wine club-only Spanish red that hadn’t been distributed in Vermont for more than a year and an Alsatian orange wine she’s sold for ages but always had to special order. Everything that’s poured in the wine bar is also available on the retail shelves.
Grape varieties aren’t listed on the menu. That Alsatian orange — Les Vins Pirouettes’ Cubique — was described as “tropical, pineapple, orange,” not “gewürztraminer,” the name of the grape. (Fair warning to my gewürz-hating friends.)
The omission isn’t meant to be misleading, Lam said, but rather to gently push people toward something they wouldn’t normally pick.
On Tuesdays, Wilder offers a flight of three unnamed wines for a $15 blind tasting. They vary in style and region, but all are made from the same grape. The game is to guess what that grape is. (There’s no prize, just bragging rights.)
Lam doesn’t make it easy. Last week, the wines were a red, a white and a pink sparkling. The grape? Blaufränkisch.
“Nobody got it,” Lam said with a laugh. “There were some good guesses, though.”
So far, Wilder’s team of 10 doesn’t seem to be getting the most common question Lam fielded four years ago: “What is natural wine?” The term has made its way into the zeitgeist, she said.
Wilder’s food menu is more “girl dinner” than full dinner, Lam said, referring to the trend of snacky meals. Gragen Cook, Wilder’s front-of-house manager and food buyer, said the food’s job is to enhance the wine.
“On a scale of dive bar to restaurant, we’re the in-between,” Cook said.
Cook has a cocktail background, not a cooking one. But his food hits the mark. Working in a tiny kitchen — if you can call knives, a toaster oven and a meat slicer behind the bar a kitchen — he prepares simple yet stunning plates that reference what one might eat at a wine bar in Spain, Portugal, Italy or France. They’re largely filled with Vermont ingredients, especially cheeses and meats.
On a recent Tuesday afternoon, I stopped into Wilder during the new weekday lunch service. I’d seen a friend’s Instagram story of the nectarine-topped ricotta toast ($14) and had to have it. (I’d also seen another friend’s post that she was working remotely from Wilder’s couches, next to outlets built into the floor. Yes, please.)
I asked Cook which wine would go best with the tart yet savory toast, which was slathered with creamy ricotta, perfectly salted, and topped with delicate, uniform slices of nectarine, cherry and fresh mint. He quickly recommended the Seehof rosé ($14) from Germany.
The light, mineral pinot noir was more classic than I’d choose on my own — I’m usually in the “wilder the better” camp — and tasted almost like a traditional Provençal rosé. But it was a perfect pairing.
I could have stayed all afternoon, maybe swapping the wine for one of Wilder’s thoughtful nonalcoholic options. Soon, it will stock cans of Vivid Coffee.
Several evenings later, I opted for a lower-alcohol lambrusco spritz ($14). The refreshing combo of sparkling red wine, Ghia nonalcoholic aperitif, grapefruit juice, pebble ice and Castelvetrano olive garnish was gulpable, especially during a heat wave.
My friend, visiting from Brooklyn, was happy to see that Alsatian orange wine on the menu ($14). It’s one she knows well from big-city wine bars. We ordered more olives ($6), radishes and butter ($6), and the Pile O Chips ($12) to go with our drinks.
The table was soon full of snacks and drinks, each one more fun than the next. We could have been at a wine bar in Italy or Spain. But we were in Burlington, just as Lam intended.
The original print version of this article was headlined “Getting Wilder | Sipha Lam’s wine shop and bar sparkles in its new Burlington home”
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This article appears in Jul 2-8, 2025.
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