Thirsty Owl Wine Bar And Bistro

I have been coming to the Thirsty Owl since it opened five years ago. The Wine Tasting Room and Restaurant is a wonderful place for a few people or a big party. The staff are very knowledgeable on their wines and their food. Stop in and enjoy a wonderful glass of wine and some delicious tapas or full dinner. I could not say enough about Thirsty Owl. I am so happy they came to Saratoga Springs!

Nice atmosphere, good food and friendly, knowledgeable service.. It's more than a Wine Company, it's a restaurant too. Well, a Bistro, and a nice one at that. Entering from the parking lot at the rear of the building you will arrive at the wine tasting room. If you want to eat, you can choose to sit there at the wine bar or be seated in a small narrow dining room toward the front of the building. In good weather there also appears to be an outdoor patio/porch for dining.

We decided to "taste" and "dine" at the tasting bar with it's high ceilings and chandeliers. A tasting of 5 wines is $5. There were 13 whites, 9 reds, and 2 desert wines. Between my wife and I we were able to try 10 of the 22 available wines (two were sold out). Typical to New York State wines, the whites were better than the reds.

To go with your wine sampling, the Tapas menu offers a Cheese Board ($20), a Meat Board ($20), or a combination of the two Boards ($20/$38). There are also soups, salads, and 15 Tapas dishes (generally $9 to $14). The one exception being the Seared Foie Gras, Grilled Persimmon, with Yucca Chip and Thirsty Owl Ice Wine Reduction ($19).

Still hungry? There are approximately a dozen Entrees between $24 and $37 and four desserts were available the evening we were there. The menus are prominently labeled as to which dishes are gluten free or vegetarian.

We decided to order four dishes from the Tapas menu and two full additional glasses of wine, after our tasting, to go with the Tapas. The wines we chose to enjoy with our food were the semi-sweet 2012 Snow Owl Riesling ($12.95) and the 2012 Dry Riesling ($15.95). For food we chose the Papas Bravas drizzled with spicy sauce($6), the Black Paella with scallops, shrimp, calamari, and roasted red peppers ($13), the Lamb Stuffed Piquillo Peppers with Pinot Noir and mint cream sauce ($10), and the Lightly Fried Calamari with lemon aioli ($10).

The Fried Calamari was average, nothing special, and the aioli just ok. The Papas Bravas were nicely cubed potatoes that reminded us of hash browns, and their spicy sauce was not very spicy. The Lamb stuffed Piquillo peppers were excellent. You'll have to take just my word for it since my wife won't eat lamb. But we both raved about the pinot noir and mint cream sauce that came with it, choosing to also dip some of the other dishes we had in that sauce. The Black Paella was a piece of art work, and very tasty too.

Overall, we were very pleased and plan to return to try some additional dishes and maybe some additional wines. Because we also bought a bottle of wine to go, a 2012 Cabernet Sauvignon Ice Wine ($39.95), which was a double gold medal winner, one of our wine tastings ($5) was credited to our bill.