Best Restaurants for Wine Lovers in Sarasota
This list has 8 restaurants, and 6 carry an exceptional wine program. The exceptional rooms cover contemporary Northern Italian cooking, refined Old World Italian cooking, house-made pasta with wines from the restaurant's own Tuscan vineyards, a modern steakhouse with seafood and pasta, classical continental cooking with New Orleans and French influences, and contemporary American fine dining with seafood and steaks. The other two programs are curated: fresh local seafood and seasonal global fusion.
Michael's on East in Midtown Plaza holds a Wine Spectator Best of Award of Excellence and a Star Wine List. Duval's Fresh. Local. Seafood. and Sage, both in downtown, hold an Award of Excellence on curated lists. Bevardi's Salute in downtown pours wines from its own Tuscan vineyards. Mediterraneo in Downtown, CasAntica Ristorante in downtown, and Roessler's in Vamo keep extensive lists with exceptional programs. element in Downtown Sarasota keeps an exceptional program.
How this list is chosen: Restaurants holding a Wine Spectator Restaurant Award or rated as having an exceptional wine program, listed alphabetically. Updated October 8, 2026.
Bevardi's Salute
Exceptional wine program
Lemon Avenue and the Question of What Italian Means in Sarasota North Lemon Avenue sits close enough to Sarasota's downtown core that you can hear the bay if the evening is quiet. The block has the character of a city that takes its arts...
CasAntica Ristorante
Exceptional wine program
CasAntica Ristorante on North Palm Avenue occupies a quiet stretch of Sarasota that rewards those who seek out the city's more considered dining rooms. The name signals something deliberate about tradition and setting, and the address places it within easy reach of the Rosemary District's growing concentration of independent restaurants. For a fuller read on Sarasota's Italian dining scene, the EP Club guide covers the wider picture.
Duval's Fresh. Local. Seafood.
Wine Spectator Award of Excellence
On Main Street in downtown Sarasota, Duval's Fresh. Local. Seafood. has tracked the city's shift from tourist-facing fish houses toward a more ingredient-driven approach to Gulf and Florida seafood. The format centres on what the region's coastal waters can actually deliver, placing it squarely in a growing tier of Florida dining rooms that treat provenance as a structural commitment rather than a tagline.
element
Exceptional wine program
On Sarasota's Main Street, element operates in a dining register that rewards attention to sourcing and season. The address places it inside the city's most active restaurant corridor, where ingredient-led cooking has gradually displaced the coast's older surf-and-turf defaults. For visitors and locals tracking where Florida's farm and gulf produce ends up on a plate, element is a practical starting point.
Mediterraneo
Exceptional wine program
Mediterraneo sits on Main Street in the heart of downtown Sarasota, positioning itself within the city's growing Italian and Mediterranean dining corridor. The address places it squarely in the cultural district, steps from the arts venues and galleries that drive both lunch traffic and evening reservations. For Sarasota's midrange dining scene, it represents the kind of neighbourhood anchor that sustains a block across both services.
Michael's on East
Wine Spectator Best of Award of Excellence · Exceptional wine program
Michael's on East has anchored Sarasota's serious dining scene for decades, earning a Star Wine List White Star recognition for a wine program that matches the ambition of the kitchen. Located on South East Avenue in the city's Southside Village, it represents the kind of locally rooted fine dining that Florida's Gulf Coast has historically under-produced relative to its Miami counterpart.
Roessler's
Exceptional wine program
Roessler's on Vamo Way occupies a quieter bracket of Sarasota dining than the downtown corridor — a long-established address that positions itself against the city's more formal European-influenced restaurants rather than its casual Gulf-side options. Among Sarasota diners who track the fine dining tier, it carries a reputation built on consistency and format rather than on celebrity-chef visibility or awards-cycle momentum.
Sage
Wine Spectator Award of Excellence
On Sarasota's First Street, Sage operates in a dining register that rewards the curious over the casual. The room rewards patience, the kitchen rewards attention, and the collaboration between front-of-house and kitchen places it in a tier above most of what Sarasota offers at the table. For a city still writing its fine-dining chapter, Sage reads like a confident paragraph.
Planning restaurants for wine lovers in Sarasota
- Which restaurants on this list hold Wine Spectator awards?
- Michael's on East in Midtown Plaza, Duval's Fresh. Local. Seafood. in downtown, and Sage in downtown hold the Wine Spectator awards on this list. Michael's holds a Best of Award of Excellence and a Star Wine List, with a renowned wine cellar and an exceptional program. Duval's and Sage hold an Award of Excellence, and both run curated wine programs.
- Which neighborhoods are the wine restaurants on this list in?
- The restaurants on this list are in downtown, Downtown, Midtown Plaza, Vamo, and Downtown Sarasota. Duval's Fresh. Local. Seafood., Sage, Bevardi's Salute, and CasAntica Ristorante are in downtown, Mediterraneo is in Downtown, element is in Downtown Sarasota, Michael's on East is in Midtown Plaza, and Roessler's is in Vamo.
- Which lists on this page name a region or a cellar?
- Bevardi's Salute in downtown pours wines from its own Tuscan vineyards, and the list there is extensive. Michael's on East in Midtown Plaza has a renowned wine cellar. The wine program at Michael's is exceptional, and the list is extensive.
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