About Cantina Sauvage

Cantina Sauvage, is a Seattle wine bar & bottle shop, focused on bringing dynamic, naturally made wines paired up with Levantine inspired food from Cafe Suliman! Our goal is to connect with our guests in a way that breaks down barriers and transcends boundaries, fostering a genuine exchange of thought and ideas through the medium of wine and thoughtfully prepaired dishes.

Suli and I are partnered together on the former premises of bar ferd’nand, in Melrose Market! Talk about a return! Full Circle! The last five years have been a journey! I did not start Cantina Sauvage with the thought that i would one day open another wine bar, let alone in the shell of my beloved Bar Ferd’nand. So much has happened in the intervening years since Ferd’nand’s opening, its’ arc of existence: closing, and the conception of Cantina Sauvage. When Ferd was happening, its trajectory toward Natural Wine, was an organic one (no pun intended) . . . And I am not a fan of the term “Natural Wine”, if only because of the dogma that is extant in the term now. Authentic wine is what really speaks to me . . . and yes, a wine that truly inspires me, that I feel a connection to, is usually one that is pretty much unfuctwith, naturally made . . . but, a wine, to me, doesn’t have merit, simply because it is naturally made. There are some truly shitty wines, that are natural… mud puddles are natural too . . . it doesn’t mean I want to drink from them. But, if you’re trying to make wine and not use anything to curb the growth of the many different strains of ambient bacteria . . . that shit is hard to do! My hat is off to you. And really, even if your naturally made wine tastes like ass, that’s okay too. I like ass . . . What really bothers me, is that ”natural wine” has become a political statement to some of us. I don’t know about you, but I get enough politics in almost every other aspect of my life and I don’t need my wine to be politicized.