Side Saddle Wine Saloon opens this month with cocktails, natural wines and shareable plates

“We saw a need for wine bar spaces, elevated spaces, where folks could gather and connect over a well-crafted product,” Bellman said.

Five years later, the build-out at 680 Hamilton Ave. is nearly finished and includes an 800-square-foot wine and cocktail bar, an 1,800-square-foot Finca to Filter outpost and a patio that wraps in front of both buildings and overlooks the Southside Beltline trail.

Credit: Courtesy of Rebecca Carmen

Credit: Courtesy of Rebecca Carmen

During the day, Finca to Filter will serve the same seasonal espresso, tea drinks and baked goods as its location in Old Fourth Ward. At 4 p.m., neighboring wine bar Side Saddle Wine Saloon will open for business as Finca starts to wind down. Once the coffee bar closes for the night, the Finca space will become available to host events, while Side Saddle will seat diners and serve food and drinks to both spaces.

Carla Fears, who previously ran pop-up Gourmet Street Foods, was tapped to develop a menu of shareable Italian-forward dishes with Southern influences. Diners can expect snack boards with local cheeses and accoutrements along with composed dishes and plates large enough to share, including a hamburger that arrives halved.

No dish will cost more than $20.

Love’s cocktail menu features rotating specialty cocktails and four house cocktails for $12 each, including a margarita, a Kentucky mule, ranch water and a dirty Shirley. The specialty cocktails vary in price and each drink has three tasting notes listed on the menu to encourage diners to try something new even if they don’t recognize the ingredients, Love said.

Credit: Courtesy of Rebecca Carmen

Credit: Courtesy of Rebecca Carmen

Expect beverages like the Porch Swing, a “savory, salty and effervescent” drink with Tattersall Vodka, pickle, peppercorn, olive oil, soda water and negroni olives, or the Lasso that Pistachio, a “nutty, smooth, silky” drink with Elijah Craig Bourbon, pistachio, almond milk, vanilla, salt and dark chocolate.

Love said she was very intentional when sourcing spirits for the bar and placed an emphasis on including small and local distillers as well as “women, BIPOC and LGBTQ” producers. She is also developing a nonalcoholic cocktail menu.

Side Saddle’s wine program focuses on natural, small batch wines. Glasses range from $14-$18 and a wine flight of three pours is $15.

Wine buyer Jett Kolarik plans to showcase smaller and more sustainable producers.

“The big focus for Side Saddle is definitely female producers, small producers, people of color, queer producers if we can find them, and highlighting those people since their voices aren’t as magnified in the industry,” they said.

Since Side Saddle’s patrons skew younger, Kolarik hopes the price points and a blurb about each wine in layman’s terms will encourage diners to experiment and ask the staff questions.

Both restaurant spaces and the patio will have ample bar and table seating. Later in the summer, Bellman will debut a frozen dessert stand with frozen dipped bananas.

Credit: Courtesy of Rebecca Carmen

Credit: Courtesy of Rebecca Carmen

Event programming will also be a big part of the new location, with Thursday evening jazz on the patio, a weekly comedy night Finca Too Funny and Women Winemaker Wednesdays with half-off bottles.

Finca to Filter will be open daily 7 a.m.-5 p.m.

Side Saddle Wine Saloon will be open 4-10 p.m. Mondays-Thursdays, noon-midnight Fridays-Saturdays and noon-5 p.m. Sundays.

Check Side Saddle’s Instagram for the official grand opening date.

680 Hamilton Ave. SE, Atlanta. instagram.com/sidesaddlewine

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