Santiam Wine & Bistro

This nice bistro and wine shop is a great one-​stop store for Oregon wines and beyond. Their knowledgable staff gave us good recommendations on Oregon Pinot noirs that turned-​out to be fantastic. Their prices are reasonable and they had a great choice of wines at all price points. Considering that most Oregon wineries charge $ 10 or $ 20 for a wine tasting, coming to Santiam Wine is a great place to start in planning your wine touring in the nearby Yamhill Valley to hone-​in on the best wineries to visit. Oh, and they also have tastings at there shop!

Not only is there a tasty fantastic wine selection and cozy atmosphere, but the fresh food and menu are fantastic. The owner is personable and fun. I absolutely love it here! One of my favorite bistros.

Very good food. Enjoyed the wine and Wild Mushroom Lasagna. Discount on six wines they select and allow you to taste.

Very good, nice and helpful staff. A bit expensive for Salem. I look forward to a return visit.

I am from the Kansas City area and met up with family here for lunch. My husband and I were very impressed with the wine selection and settled on a bottle of French wine since we had been partaking in many Oregon Pinot’s during our stay. The wine was exquisite and a bargain to boot.
I was pleasantly surprised that the food was top notch and the prices are more than reasonable for the high quality.
We had a wonderful visit and the staff was attentive to our needs.

An update to my initial review. The manager is still not friendly and the store is consistently understaffed. I have been to the shop half a dozen times now because the location is convenient for me. However each time I’m in the store I feel unwelcome by the manager and I feel I’ve been treated rudely. Overall not a comfortable experience.
I guess it’s worth an extra 10 or 15 minute drive to go to a store that appreciates customers. The wine shop itself has a decent selection of wine and the food is usually very good. This is the reason I gave it two stars instead of one.
I noticed there are quite a few negative reviews of the owner/​manager lady. I really hope she reads Unilocal reviews because if she doesn’t change her attitude ASAP the business will disappear.

If you, like me, were one of those kids whose favorite dessert growing up was ice cream cake roll with chocolate cake swirled with vanilla ice cream, come home to the chocolate brownie with vanilla ice cream. It makes all the bad stuff about growing up worth it. It is that much better!

I’m giving them a less than good review based on my experience with them multiple times. Sadly they lost there competition, so it’s the only wine bar currently. Customer service is horrible especially from the owner. That said they carry great upscale wines. Not the kind of place that has a warm welcoming feeling. Totally different from the now debunked Grand Vines.

we went in for Friday night tasting, ended up staying for a wonderful dinner. Debbie and her staff are total pros!

Friday nights are always a Red tasting night. With a good mix of one varietal of grape. They have warm rosemary nuts and olives that is perfect pairing with wine. The staff is always friendly and eager to help and please the tasters. Fun way to spend a Friday after work.

Have to downgrade my review from before. Made a 630 reservation for their NYE Champagne tasting. Arrived on-​time and were seated. Didn’t leave till 830. We were served room temp champagne for $ 18. Wayyyy overpriced for the splash of a pour. They ran out of the Lobster Bisque, which was heavily advertised as the special of the evening on social network sites, emails, etc. (Only made a pot of it). Service was spotty and honestly the person waiting on us, (who I think it maybe the owner?) was awful. She has waited on me before and she is just not friendly. No smiles, nothing. They were understaffed to say the least. From what I heard from another in my party the amount of people there was no different then any other Friday night. Disappointing to say the least.

We got the cheese and charcuterie plate, with the cambezola, humbolt ash and triple cream cheeses. All were really good and went well together. We opted for the free wine tasting, and ended up buying one of them, though the other two in the flight were easy to pass up.
The reason for the three star rating was that they were more than happy to try to double charge us for the cheese plate. I paid for it while my partner was using the facilities. He then bought two bottles of wine, not three minutes later and the sales lady charged him also for the cheese plate. Were the store actually busy then the mistake would have been understandable but we were one of only three small parties in the store at the time. She sheepishly gave him the $ 15 that she overcharged without apology.

Very nice bistro interior, nice wine selections, but terribly disappointing lunch. We ordered the crab corn chowder, only to have it served barely warm, due to the cold crab meat it was topped with. We mentioned to the waitress that they might want the soup hotter, ours was barely warm. Imagine my surprise to find I had paid $ 10 for a half eaten bowl of soup. My check was: Soup, 1 cheese stick and a glass of pinot gries = 17.50. YIKES! Bentley’s here I come.

Santiam moved from the downtrodden digs on Commercial to an even gloomier neighborhood … now next to a non-​EPA compliant auto body shop, and across the street from a ramshackle genuine Oregon Deerskin Glove workshop.
But the biggest surprise discovered upon stepping into the best wine shop in Salem was the strong bouquet of roasted capers, garlic & balsamic … yes they have food now. And its not diminished their great breadth of wine choices at all price points. So you can now get a $ 120 Brunello and a Charcuterie Plate — all while next to a cash-​only body shop.
I did not try the food … but I did survey the crowd (and it was packed). Very mid-​to late career aged. Demo seems to be about mid 50’s with decent paying jobs. A smattering of folks in their 40’s. Mostly coupled-​up. Definitely a crowd that Considers All Things (i.e. lots of Prius’ in the lot). Its very unlikely I will eat here for a variety or reasons, none having to do with the food I saw served (which looked very wine-​bistroy).
I think its cool to have a killer wine store with a nice selection of smoked pork in a run down blue collar part of suburbia. Makes it real for some reason. Screw Portlandia, we got Salemania.

Food portions are tiny, but not the prices. A place that sells wine, beer, or other spirits should give people good food cheap. Good wine selection, but Roth’s has a fine venue not too far away.

I only came here to buy wine, so I’ll have to write another review for the food later. The lady who owns the store is totally NOT hooty snooty. I told her I was in the $ 10 range and she found me several wines to go with my salmon that night, and the one I chose was delicious. She even opened a bottle of rose and let me sample some others! Clearly she values her customers even if their lower-​end like me.
I ended up buying a wine from Salem because I prefer to stay local, even though it was slightly more expensive than the one she suggested. She really suggested something cheaper because she thought it’d be a better pairing with my food. She’s obviously passionate about pairing the right food with the right wine and the right customer.
Don’t be afraid to come here if you’re on a small budget or don’t know wine because the owner will be more than willing to help you! Thanks! :)

Love this place! There is no need to buy wine at the grocery store anymore. The personal service and extensive selection makes this the best place to buy wine in Salem. Debbie is personable and great at helping you pick out wines. She will even special order things for you if you want something that she doesn’t have. There are occasional tastings and a small «snack» type menu. It’s conveniently located next to Fitt’s, so you can pick up your wine and fish and go home ready to make dinner!

Went to their new location on 12^th se last Friday for their wine tasting. What a nice way to spend a casual Friday night. There were lots of people there enjoying the wines– Spanish reds that night. Nice small plates to snack on, people were very friendly. I must drop by here more often!

There are a couple of wine shops in Salem, but this one sticks out. You get great personal help from Debbie, and she is there to help with great advise even if you don’t know what you want. No overwhelming feeling, or stuffiness from this wineshop. The wine tastings that she offers every month are fantastic. Always look forward to going in. If I don’t see what I want, she is usually able to get it within a few days.