Winnipeg's wine bars and wine shops: where to drink and buy

Manitoba's climate rules out any real local wine industry, so Winnipeg's wine scene is built around the people pouring and selling it rather than growing it: a handful of restaurants that built their whole concept around the bottle list, and a couple of independent shops willing to stock what the big liquor marts don't. The three below sit in three different parts of the city, so this is less a crawl than a set of stops worth planning a trip around.

Harth Mozza & Wine Bar

Harth Mozza sits on St Anne's Road in St. Vital, a part of the city most visitors never see, which is part of the draw for locals who treat it as a neighbourhood find. Chef Brent Genyk runs it as an Italian wine bar built around house-made pasta and cheese, wood-fired Margherita pizza, and a mozzarella-forward menu meant to be shared family-style. The wine list is chosen to match, and the room is small enough that a reservation is worth making before driving out.

Ellement Wine & Spirits

Ellement is a retail shop rather than a bar, tucked into the Forks Market at the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers. It has carried spirits and cigars since 1994, but its wine buying leans toward natural, biodynamic, and low-intervention bottles, including some Burgundy and Beaujolais selections not easy to find elsewhere in Manitoba. Staff will talk through a bottle before you buy it, which makes it a good stop if you want something to bring back to the house rather than drink on the spot.

Cordova Tapas & Wine

Cordova sits on Albert Street in the Exchange District, opened in 2017 by co-owners Gael Winandy and Greg Stevenard, who built the room themselves around a living wall and an open kitchen behind the bar. The menu runs Spanish and southwestern French, small plates like baked Camembert and pan Catalan, alongside a list drawn from France, Spain, and Italy. It fits naturally into an evening already built around the Exchange District's heritage streets.

Planning a visit

All three keep restaurant or shop hours rather than late-bar hours, and Harth Mozza in particular is closed Sundays and Mondays, so check each one's own site before heading out. Geographically they don't cluster: Harth Mozza is a drive out to St. Vital, Ellement is downtown at The Forks, and Cordova is a few blocks north in the Exchange District, so treat this as three separate outings rather than one wine crawl on foot.