Wine bars are their own special niche in the bar scene, and Casot’s niche is both a co-working space and a wine bar that does an impressive day to night transformation. The name Casot comes from an exclusively Italian lineage, meaning, “a tiny stone house in the middle of the Italian vineyards that provided drinks and food for the workers.” It would provide a place to rest outside of the hot sun, a place to take shelter from sudden summer storms or a place to recharge with a drink after a hard day’s work. The bar in Casot is appropriately vintage, and the space is tight with a nice garage-door style patio for warmer seasons. It is a walkable Salt Lake neighborhood watering hole in the 15th and 15th area.
Unlike most wine bars, the selection at Casot is limited. With an especially limited selection of wines by the glass, Scott Evans, the founder of the Pago Restaurant Group hand selects each varietal. “I wanted 10 to 15 wines by the glass at all times, but wines that change every week. Not every single wine, but there’s always about three to five new wines every single week,” says Evans. “My vision was to special order the wines, so they’re either exclusively at the restaurant or very few places in Utah, and then just rotate them through.” The unifying rule of thumb? “I’ll carry anything I would personally enjoy,” says Evans.
Sample a rotating selection of unique wines at Casot Wine Bar in Salt Lake City. Photo by Adam Finkle.
The team behind the bar are well educated and will walk you through the wine list and help you narrow down your choices. On any given day, you’re likely to find a light, medium and full red, a sparkling wine or two, and some more unusual choices, like a Pétillant Naturel wine. Pét-Nats are rustic sparkling wines produced in the méthode ancestral, one that predates champagne. Pét-Nat wines tend to have a light and fizzy mouthfeel. They are generally lower in alcohol as well, which may be part of the appeal.
“I see more people being a little bit more cautious on how much they drink when it comes to alcohol by volume. And Pét-Nats are a great option, because they’re generally 10 to 11% alcohol versus 13% or 14% for some sparkling wines,” says Evans.
When asked about recent wine trends, Evans says, “Something that really shocked me is the success of the skin-fermented white wines, which are called orange wines.” But patrons of Casot seem to really love the orange wines which can range from a light coral tint up to a bright stained-glass tangerine. “Two years ago, there were zero orange wines available in the state,” says Evans. “And now there’s three or four. It reminds me of rosé 20 years ago, where the perception of rosé was that it was just all sweet and not delicious and unique and high quality. And orange wines don’t really have the stigma, but they were just so foreign. No one knew about it. Now people are asking about orange wines.”
In addition to Casot, the Pago restaurants offer a full wine list and special event wine dinners, often with the vintner present. Sign up for their newsletter to get all the insider information.
Visit Casot Wine + Work in the heart of Salt Lake City’s 15th and 15th neighborhood. Learn more at casotwinework.com.
See more stories like this and all of our food and drink coverage. And while you’re here, why not subscribe and get six annual issues of Salt Lake magazine’s curated guide to the best of life in Utah.
