Uncorked: Where Wine, Community, and the Mountains Meet

If you’re exploring The Village at Palisades Tahoe, Uncorked is a destination you don’t want to miss.

The intimate wine bar is lined wall to wall with bottles from California, Europe and beyond. The store is warmly lit, and a curved live-edge slab of wood serves as the bar. There are glasses being poured, bottles being opened and, on almost any visit, something that wasn’t on the menu a few weeks.

That’s intentional.

Chris Barkman, who owns Uncorked with his wife, Kelsey, has spent nearly three decades in wine. But one of the things he loves most about it is the on-going education.

“I’m still learning each day,” Chris says. “I’m still discovering a grape that I’ve never heard of. A new varietal from a new vineyard or this new site.”

That constant discovery drives Uncorked.

Chris & Kelsey hand-select every wine that comes into the shop and the staff is invited to be part of the process. The by-the-glass menu changes twice a month, which means there’s always something new to try. Producers rotate on and off the walls. Even after years of tasting wine professionally, he is still looking for the bottle, grape or region that surprises him.

Recently, it was a white wine from the Canary Islands made from a grape called Marmajuelo.

“Fresh, bright lemon, lime, extremely high acid, really refreshing,” Chris says.

He poured it by the glass last winter. Customers loved it.

Uncorked is more than just a wine bar. It’s a place that welcomes the community to share time together over drinks and food. For Chris, being able to provide that is one of the best parts of the job.

“There’s such a thriving, lively community in North Lake Tahoe and Truckee,” he says. “You really get to connect with that community through facilitating experiences.”

Sometimes that experience begins with someone who already knows exactly what they like. Other times, it begins with someone who knows almost nothing about wine.

Chris and his staff start with simple questions. Red or white? Light, medium or full-bodied? Familiar or something new?

The goal isn’t to make wine complicated. It’s to help someone find something they enjoy.

“There’s a degree where you’re living vicariously through their enjoyment,” Chris says. “It’s really fun to turn someone onto a wine that they didn’t know that they liked.”

When that person returns later and asks, “What else do you have for me?” Chris knows the experience worked.

A Wine Shop Built on Perspective

Chris grew up with wine around the dinner table. His father owned a wine shop in Southern California, and his parents regularly gathered the family for dinner. His parents encouraged him early on to smell the wine and get a sense of the characteristics of different types of wine.

Later, after years working in restaurants and hospitality, he moved into wine distribution. Eventually he became a brand manager, traveling regularly to places like France and Italy, visiting vineyards and meeting the people behind the wines.

The experience gave him a remarkably broad reference point.

Chris believes developing a palate isn’t only about drinking great wine. You need to taste great wine, mediocre wine, bad wine and even flawed wine. Without those experiences, he says, you don’t know what you’re comparing against.

Today, he applies those years of tasting to every bottle he considers for Uncorked.

“If it doesn’t hit all the marks, we don’t buy it.”

The shelves lean heavily toward California and the classic growing regions of Europe, but there is no single formula. What matters is whether the wine delivers for its style, its region and its price.

And increasingly, Chris is drawn toward producers who approach wine with a lighter touch.

The backbone of the Uncorked wine program is what he describes as mindfully farmed wine: producers farming organically, using native yeasts, limiting sulfites and allowing slower fermentations. Wines that are crafted for quality, not profit.

“It results in a wine that’s pure,” Chris says. “It’s made by hands, not corporations. It’s clean. It’s balanced. It has a soul to it. It’s elegant.

The relationships with those smaller, mindful vineyards matter to him. Places where hard work and thoughtful farming can be tasted in the grapes.

Great winemakers, he says, are a little like great musicians. Vintage conditions may change from year to year, but you can still recognize the person behind the work.

That sense of place and personality is what Chris wants reflected on the shelves.

Après at Uncorked

There’s another reason Uncorked feels at home in Olympic Valley.

Chris is a snowboarder.

He’s been riding for roughly 36 years, and when winter arrives, his favorite chair at Palisades Tahoe is Headwall.

Why?

“Steeps, deeps, length.”

He especially loves the days when storms settle over the mountain.

“It’s probably one of the most peaceful, quiet environments you can be in when it’s just nuking outside and all you can hear is snowflakes falling through the air.”

A few hours later, the same day might end at the bar at Uncorked.

Chris doesn’t believe there’s one perfect après wine. After skiing, one person might want a Napa Cabernet. Another might want rosé. Sometimes, despite the snow outside, what tastes best is a cold, refreshing, high-acid white.

That choice is part of the fun.

A day in the mountains gives way to a glass of wine, a conversation and perhaps something you’ve never tried before.

For Chris and Kelsey, that’s what Uncorked has ultimately become: a place where their own interests in wine, Tahoe and community intersect.

And if you walk in not knowing exactly what you want, that may be even better.

There’s probably something on the wall you haven’t tasted yet.