Indulge in the art of savoring local wine

“Drink the house wines,” advises Rick Steves. “A small glass of house red or a small beer (birrino) costs about €1,” he explains, while “vin bon, Venetian for fine wine, may run you from €2 to €6 per little glass.” At bars like Enoiteca Mascareta, the daily by-the-glass wines, chalked up on a blackboard, are almost all from north-east Italy, and many of them are organic,” notes Anne Hanley in The Telegraph. “Best advice is to put yourself in Mauro’s capable hands, and go with the flow.” The same sound advice can be applied elsewhere.

“More and more bars are going deluxe,” says Venetian vintner Matteo Bisol at Saveur, “bolstering local wines with more obscure regions and upping the selection of on-trend ‘natural’ and ‘organic’ bottles.” But although these bars “usually mean higher quality wine,” navigating them “takes more local knowledge than good luck.” At top notch bacari like Vino Vero they skew towards “eclectic natural styles,” he writes, while at Estro there are 700 different labels, “all of which are fair game to open for the sale of just two glasses.” There’s an “authentic mix of Italians,” at Al Merca, where you can try “a citrusy-Soave, a white wine made from the Garganega grape.” While no Venetian bacaro tour is complete without a visit to Cantina do Mori, a Venetian institution, which has been in business since 1462 and serves “inexpensive, young wine from demijohns.”