Wine List

At the Back Porch Café, we feel that exceptional food deserves to be enjoyed with good wine. Although our menu has changed and evolved over the 30 years we have been in business, or dedication to providing the highest quality cuisine we possibly can has never changed. Maintaining that quality involves procuring the freshest and best ingredients obtainable which are then prepared in the most professional way possible, all of which involves expense. To maintain this quality and still remain in business necessitates a certain price point for our cuisine which we are not able to lower. However, we take pride in offering some great wines at very reasonable prices simply because we can. This makes the total dining experience more affordable.

Our wine list usually encompasses about 60 wines, with more than half of those selections available by the glass. The emphasis is on "good value" wines, or wines of exceptional quality or character at reasonable prices. We also carry many well known wines but try to price those at less than you'd find them priced on many wine lists. Generally, the more we pay for a wine, the less we will mark it up. This is our effort to encourage as many customers as possible to enjoy the best wine they can with their meals.

We personally enjoy what we call "fruit driven" wines, or wines that predominantly taste like they were made from ripe, delicious fruit. We also enjoy wines whose vintners have skillfully allowed their wines to express both the terroir or environment in which they were grown and the inherent varietal characteristics o the particular grape or grapes being used. Consequently, we offer a lot of California selections because it seems California's climates are conducive to growing that type of fruit. Some of the most knowledgeable winemakers in the world are showcasing the stellar qualities of the different California varietals in as natural and un-engineered a fashion as possible.

Our list also includes selections from France, Italy, Germany, Australia and New Zealand in an effort to provide something for everyone's taste and preference. So that our customers who dine here frequently always have something new to try, we change some selections on the list weekly, and we almost always feature two or three wines on our dinner menu which will not be found on the main wine list. These wines are typically a bit more esoteric -- or really exceptional values.

We are not wine experts but we usually recognize a great glass of wine when we taste it. Those are the wines we try to procure and offer at reasonable prices to our guests to compliment our cuisine and make the experience of dining at The Back Porch Café as satisfying as possible. All you really need to know about wine to enjoy it is this: if you like a wine for whatever reason, it is a good wine; if you don't, it isn't.

Enjoy,

-- Keith

Margaritas....

We also are very particular about our Margaritas. We freshly squeeze limes and make our own simple syrup before we even start to think about the selection of fine Tequilas that we stock.