Art of Merlot

Old Town's Drinking Life, One Glass at a Time

Old Town Scottsdale's Main Street has always operated as more of a neighbourhood main drag than a tourist corridor, even as the galleries, restaurants, and bars that line it attract visitors from well outside the zip code. The blocks around 7036 E Main St carry a particular rhythm: afternoon foot traffic from nearby galleries gives way to an after-work crowd, which in turn gives way to the kind of unhurried evening drinking that defines the area's social fabric. Art of Merlot sits inside that rhythm, on a stretch where a bar's relationship with its regulars matters as much as its concept.

That community function is worth taking seriously as context. Scottsdale's drinking scene has bifurcated over the past decade into high-volume entertainment venues anchored on Scottsdale Road and quieter, more deliberately local spots tucked into the side streets and mid-blocks of Old Town. Art of Merlot's Main Street address places it closer to the latter camp, where the conversation at the bar and the familiarity of the room carry as much weight as the list. Comparable bars in other American cities that operate with this neighbourhood-watering-hole logic, places like ABV in San Francisco or Julep in Houston, derive their authority from consistency and community trust rather than from rotating concept menus or competitive press cycles.

The Main Street Block and What It Means

The physical block around Art of Merlot is worth mapping before you arrive. E Main St in Old Town functions as a connector between the gallery district to the west and the denser bar concentration further east, which means the foot traffic here tends to be more intentional than the spillover crowds you find near Stetson Drive. The bar at 7133 E Stetson Dr and the AC Lounge, with its tapas-style small plates and craft beer selection, represent the more polished, hotel-adjacent end of Old Town drinking. Art of Merlot occupies a different register: street-level, accessible, and oriented toward the kind of guest who has already decided they want to stay a while.

That positioning matters when you're choosing where to spend an evening. Old Town has enough options that the choice between a high-design cocktail program and a wine-forward neighbourhood bar is a genuine one. For guests drawn to the former, bars like Kumiko in Chicago or Bar Leather Apron in Honolulu set a standard for what technical ambition looks like in a bar program. Art of Merlot's identity, as the name signals directly, is narrower and more focused: wine is the organizing principle, and the room is built around that.

Wine as the Room's Organizing Logic

A bar that centres itself on a single grape variety makes an implicit promise to its regulars: that the selection and curation around that variety will be handled with more care than a generalist wine list offers. Merlot as a focus is a considered choice in the current American wine bar context. The grape spent most of the 2000s and early 2010s in commercial exile, pushed out by the Sideways effect, while Cabernet and Pinot dominated premium conversation. Its rehabilitation has been gradual and is largely driven by sommelier communities and by the growing visibility of right-bank Bordeaux and quality domestic Merlot from Washington State and Napa. A bar that leans into that rehabilitation positions itself as ahead of, rather than behind, the broader conversation.

For wine bars operating at the neighbourhood level, the curation question is as much about depth as breadth. The bars that earn the loyalty of local regulars in this format typically carry enough range by producer and region to reward return visits, without overextending into a list so long it becomes unwieldy. Comparable wine-forward bars in other cities, Jewel of the South in New Orleans being one example of a bar that pairs a specific identity with community-level hospitality, demonstrate that focus and regularity of programming matter more than scale in this format.

Who Comes Here and Why It Works for Them

The guests who gravitate toward Art of Merlot tend to be the people who already know Old Town well enough to move past the main drag. Gallery visitors extending an evening, locals who live within walking distance of the Old Town core, and visitors staying at nearby properties who want something lower-key than the entertainment-district bars further east all make up the likely mix. The Arcadia Farms Cafe and Alo Cafe nearby attract a similar demographic during daytime hours, and that continuity of neighbourhood character carries into the evening at Art of Merlot.

For visitors arriving from outside Arizona, the bar fits naturally into a broader Old Town evening rather than standing as a standalone destination. The area's concentration of options means that an itinerary that starts with dinner at one of Old Town's chophouses and ends with wine here is a coherent one. Scottsdale's restaurant and bar scene is covered in more depth in our full Scottsdale restaurants guide, which maps the options by neighbourhood and format.

Planning Your Visit

Art of Merlot is located at 7036 E Main St, Scottsdale, AZ 85251, in the walkable core of Old Town. Given the neighbourhood-watering-hole character of the place, walk-ins are the natural mode of arrival on quieter weeknights, though Old Town weekends draw enough volume across the block that arriving earlier in the evening is the pragmatic choice. Current hours, contact details, and any booking options are leading confirmed directly, as this information was not available at time of publication. For those building a longer bar evening, the Superbueno in New York City model of a focused, personality-driven program and the Parlour in Frankfurt approach to curated intimacy both offer useful reference points for what a well-run focused bar can look like at its leading.