Is the nation’s best wine bar in Sacramento? You can vote for it online
A winery in Newton Booth is in the running to be named the country’s best wine bar — and you can help it win the competition.
Newsweek announced nominees for its Reader’s Choice Best Wine Bar 2026 competition earlier this month, and Sacramento’s own Revolution Winery & Kitchen, at 2831 S St., is the only delegate from California on the list. The bar and restaurant makes its own wine using grapes harvested from wineries across Northern California.
“(Revolution Wines’) menu leans seasonal with shareable boards, hearty mains and brunch options, making it easy to settle in for a full meal with your tasting,” Newsweek’s description of the bar reads. “It’s community-minded, lively and walkable, a go-to for trying Sacramento-made wines without a drive to the foothills or Delta.”
Chef and co-owner Gina Genshlea works with winemakers Colleen Clothier and Sam Wharton to artfully blend seasonal meals with a snapshot of the Sacramento Valley’s wine scene. Genshlea develops seasonal meals pulling from her upbringing on her Italian family’s farm, as she never worked in a commercial kitchen prior to cooking for Revolution.
“We lived with my grandparents, so every day we had like a five-course dinner, and everything was pretty much made from the things we grew,” she said. “I try to incorporate a lot of the things that I learned growing up ... I just look for the best ingredients and I try to highlight that on our menu.”
For October, Genshlea developed a menu with numerous vegan offerings as part of the Sacramento Vegan Chef Challenge, a monthlong event encouraging restaurants across the capital region to embrace vegan cooking. One of her dishes, Uncle Dino’s Pasta ($24), is made with spiral-shaped fusilli col buco and features a cashew milk-based burrata and a roasted tomato-almond pesto developed by Genshlea’s brother.
“This (dish) was something that my brother and I collaborated on, and I just kind of fell in love with this pasta, and so now it’s on our menu,” she said. “I take little tidbits of all the experiences I have in traveling and from my childhood, and kind of throw ... that into different menu items.“
Genshlea and her husband, Joe, launched Revolution in 2007, originally based out of a garage on P Street. In 2010, the business expanded into the midtown-adjacent winery and restaurant, where the couple — but mainly Gina, as Joe emphatically points out — now run every aspect of the business.
“(I wanted to bring) a little bit of the farm (life) to midtown,” Genshlea said. “Farm life, to me, is being connected to the things you consume ... So people (can) understand and can feel connected to the ... foods and beverages that they’re enjoying (at Revolution).”
Clothier and Wharton work with vineyards within roughly 60 miles of Sacramento to shine a spotlight on the region’s top wine grapes. They visit nearby growers like the Heringer Estate, Walker Vineyard and Clocksprings Vineyard frequently to monitor grape development and build strong relationships with the growers.
In the Newton Booth production facility, Clothier’s team focuses on low-intervention fermentation processes, with native fermentation and unfiltered bottling.
“It’s just really about showcasing local (producers),” she said. “When we do bring the grapes in, we want to showcase the vineyards that we’re working with, so we have a really hands-off (fermentation) style,” she said.
In the brand’s online shop, each wine listing is accompanied by classic tasting notes and pairing suggestions, but also a brief bio of the vineyard where its grapes were sourced and a story of how the wine was ideated, fermented and blended.
“We work really, really hard to find the best grapes and to make the best wine possible, and we want our guests to understand that process,” Clothier said. “So we really want to have them be a part of it, know our notes and what we do and why.”
The winery’s centerpiece is a large copper-hued tap system, developed by Genshlea’s husband, that dispenses Revolution’s reds, whites and rosés into glasses or the subscription’s reusable bottle. All the wines in the bar’s more than 20 taps are from Revolution’s own label, made just steps from the dining room.
“When you open a bottle, in a day, (the wine) kind of goes south. So (tapped wine) is actually better quality wine than the (bottled) stuff,” Joe Genshlea said. “The temperature is always right, the flavor is always consistent. It’s just a better way to serve wine.”
He said using taps for serving wine has saved roughly 40,000 bottles from being thrown in the landfill annually.
Revolution offers two wine club memberships — a traditional three-or-six-bottles-quarterly option and a unique zero-waste refill club. The Renew Society subscription takes a sustainable approach to trying wines: For $25 a month, local wine aficionados receive a reusable glass bottle that can be filled at the winery once per month, plus other discount benefits.
Although the tap system has been in place for many years, Gina Genshlea said the refill subscription started only four months ago, and it already has more than 200 subscribers. According to Genshlea, storing the wine in a swing top bottle with a sturdy seal can help it remain fresh-tasting for up to five weeks.
Genshlea said she hopes to reach 300 monthly Renew customers by the end of the year.
The winery’s current tap list includes Revolution’s staple chardonnay, chenin blanc and syrah, as well as a unique skin contact orange chardonnay and the 2024 Coco, a light-bodied red made by blending two co-fermented wines. According to Clothier, next year’s vintage will comprise grenache, chardonnay, riesling and carignan grapes.
“That’s always a fun experiment that we get to do,” she said. “It’s bottled in the spring, and it’s a perfect summer red wine.”
Voting for Newsweek’s best wine bar competition is open through Thursday, Nov. 6, at 9 a.m. Pacific time, with readers allowed to vote once per day. Out of 15 nationwide nominees, 10 bars will be announced as winners on Thursday, Nov. 13. Other competitions for the best winery tour, best wine club, best tasting room and best overall wine are also currently accepting votes.
Joe Genshlea said that while he and the whole Revolution team are honored to be in the running for best wine bar, they are still primarily winemakers.
“We do have a wine bar, of course, it looks like a wine bar, feels like a wine bar when you go inside,” he said. “But we are actually a winery.”
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