Quick, name your favorite “wine bars” in Denver. Could you come up with one? Or more? Are they restaurants with great wine lists? Or wineries with fun tasting rooms?
I, for one, have been waiting for the city’s next true wine bar to come along. (I see you, Sienna, and RIP, Lala’s.) I’m thinking about European sidewalk-style wine bars, unique to Denver, with uncommon pours — who cares if we recognize them? — and unpretentious, all-knowing servers.
Enter .
A play on “noble rot,” the naturally occurring fungus (Bortrytis cinerea) that creates funky dessert wines with extra-high alcohol content, this new bar starts pouring Thursday from a half-glass-sized space off the alleyway behind Denver Central Market. Owners Scott and Nicole Mattson and Troy Bowen will be popping open more than 80 bottles and selling a third of them in single glasses.
Noble Riot’s opening menu comes in the form of a zine and lists, for example, four chenin blancs from the Loire Valley ($32-$73 per bottle); rieslings from Oregon ($12, $30), New York ($38) and Germany ($18, $44); bonardas ($14, $41) and malbecs ($10, $30 or $150) from Argentina.
Food comes second to the juice but doesn’t seem like an afterthought. There’s the requisite charcuterie board ($15-$25), less common gougères (savory French pastries) with shaved ham on top ($6), smoked baba ganoush ($13) and a “sexy bread service” (drizzled in duck fat and honey for $6).
You might recognize the Mattsons from their other venture: the jazz club and restaurant Nocturne, just around the corner. Before its second life, the Noble Riot space was run by , which closed in February.
The Mattsons and Bowen share a passion for natural wine, which is a loaded sentiment in 2019. The wine style takes organic and biodynamic production to another level. (These are small-scale growers who add very little to their products, and no yeast or sulfites.)
In recent years, natural wine has become wildly popular and also highly criticized, including among local wine pros. In a late 2018 , Frasca master sommelier Bobby Stuckey called the movement “a vacuum” and likened it to Fox News:
“Everything has to be so weird and such a story, and we don’t care if the wine is any good or not,” he told the magazine.
Bowen, who started six years ago and met Mattson while working at Mondo Vino in the Highland, is well aware of all the controversy. He and his team have started referring to their selections as “honest” wine instead of “natural.”
“Everyone kind of knows too much about what they think (natural wine) means,” he said, laughing.
The bar’s manifesto decries “manufactured” wines, “homogenized” styles and “over 200 allowable additives” in bottles. But Bowen puts it simply: “It’s (wine) made for thirst and made by humans.”
Starting Thursday, Noble Riot opens from 4 p.m.-midnight Tuesday through Thursday and from 2 p.m.-1 a.m. Friday and Saturday at 1336 27th St. Call 303-993-5330 or visit for menus and more information. And watch for expanded bar seating, plus an outdoor patio opening this summer.