Seochon wine bar bottle order: Spanish TLG Gran Reserva, Wine Stein

Walking the Seochon alleys to Wine Stein

Wine Stein Seochon is a café and wine bar on the 3rd floor of an alley near Gyeongbokgung Station. This day we headed up right after dinner, timed to our reservation.

The weather on our Seochon date was gorgeous. The sky was a bit cloudy but the air was cool, perfect for walking around, and it seemed like exactly the kind of weather for a terrace seat, because so many people were out. There are only so many terrace-friendly days a year, so you have to make the most of them *_*

Wandering through the alleys, we saw people everywhere. I don't usually have reason to come this far into Seochon, but there were more people than I expected.

Seochon's evenings were even better than its daytime.

After roaming around like this, our reservation time arrived and we headed to Wine Stein.

Wine Stein is on the 3rd floor and there's no elevator. Posters are even put up along the stairwell on the way up.

Near the entrance, an Einstein head is drawn on the window, as if to explain the wine + Einstein pun in the name — haha, cute.

Wine Stein's 3rd-floor window seats: why it stays quiet even on weekends

Wine Stein is on the 3rd floor with full-height windows, which gave the space a great sense of openness. It's also a fairly spacious layout, and when we visited, the group that had been there happened to be leaving, so the two of us got to spend a relaxed time alone. Seochon has a lot of small, tiny shops, but Wine Stein's space is wide and not crowded, so you get a quieter time here.

The bar table by the window looked nice too, and further inside there's a spacious table that would work well for a group.

This spot by the window also had a nice feel, but we ended up at the 4-seat window table right next to it.

Lunch Club by day, wine bar only after 6pm

During the day, you can order from Wine Stein's Lunch Club — think of it as a food-and-drink set. It seems like a nice idea to come during the day and enjoy the Lunch Club too. After 6pm it operates strictly as a wine bar. Personally, I love places run with this café-and-bar dual concept haha.

The evening food and drinks menu. You can order wine from the menu, or since bottles are displayed inside, you can pick one out yourself. We decided to pick ours haha. Note that wine here is bottle-order only!!

How to pick a bottle at Wine Stein

One section of Wine Stein is stacked full of wine bottles. You choose a bottle, then tell the staff what it is.

Prices are listed too, which makes it easy to choose — the amount in parentheses is the takeout price.

Below, there are more wines on display with prices written right on the caps.

We were deciding among these three wines, but two of the three turned out to be sold out, so we went with the remaining one, the TLG!

Fig chips as the only snack, plus pizza-sulgi and small goods

Wine Stein's snack menu starts with light options, so I picked the fig chips. We were still full from dinner, so I went for the lightest option on the far right, the fig chips haha. It's nice that they have light snacks like this too!

There are desserts too, but maybe because we came in the evening, they were sold out.

They also have the recently trendy pizza-sulgi (pizza-topped rice cake)!!

They also sell cute little knick-knacks, so it was fun to browse those too.

What TLG Torrelongares Tinto Gran Reserva tastes like

TLG Torrelongares Tinto Gran Reserva

The wine we picked came with the cap opened and glasses brought over. This Spanish wine is a blend of Garnacha, Tempranillo, and Syrah, aged around 5 years. That aging probably explains why it had such strong notes of tobacco and leather. Maybe because of the long aging, it tasted better the longer it sat, more so than right when we first tasted it! I worried it might feel too heavy without food, but it was better than expected haha.

These fig chips got sweeter the more we chewed, and the pairing with the wine was really good!!

Is Wine Stein Seochon worth a second round?

On a weekend so packed with people it felt chaotic, climbing up to the 3rd floor brought us to a quiet, uncrowded spot — Wine Stein, a Seochon café. You can come just for wine without ordering food, or, like us, pair it with light snacks. The restroom is inside the bar, and it felt like a shared restroom with separate stalls for men and women.