Cork and Co

Amazingly, I had never been to a wine bar in Austin until yesterday. My friend Hillary suggested we go since her best friend, Shari, was in town from Spain and is a bit of a wine connoisseur. She actually has a really cool job creating an online wine community and organizing wine tours all around Europe! Originally they suggested Max’s Wine Dive, but after looking at their online wine menu, I was a bit disappointed. It looks like most of their wines by the glass are between $10 – 13 for just one glass, which is a little pricey for me, and their bottles are expensive as well. It's very popular though, so I would like to go at some point (perhaps when I have more money!).

I have always wanted to try Cork & Co on Congress, because I've heard good things and they have a pretty good happy hour. From 4 - 7pm they have $5 glasses of wine, and when I got there at 7:09 they still honored their happy hour prices. The atmosphere is really nice - there are comfortable couches, conversation cards ("what is your favorite_____", "would you prefer ____ or ______"), and a whole wall of wine to choose from. We went on a Monday and we were the only ones there for most of the time.

For my first glass of wine, I got a blend of 3 grapes from France and unfortunately I forgot what it was called and can't find it on their online menu.

It was pretty good though. After we all had our first glass, another friend came so we decided to order a bottle. The only bad thing about Cork & Co was that they were out of a lot of the wines we tried to order. We tried to order probably 3 or 4 that they were out of, perhaps because we went right after the weekend. They had a lot of very reasonable bottle prices, and we chose a Chilean Carmenere for $20 and it was REALLY good. It was my favorite thing of the night.

I thought that would be the end of the night, but we were having so much fun we decided to have another bottle. This time we chose an Crios syrah and bonardo blend from Argentina, which I don't think was any of our first choice, but again, they were out of a lot. It turned out to be ok, not great though. I love the Crios torrontes, and their malbec was a bit hit at Christmas, but this one was not as fantastic.

We all had a fantastic time and the wine overall was delicious! I will definitely be back to Cork & Co especially for those $5 happy hour prices!