Eno Vino Downtown

Eno Vino sits eight floors up in the AC Hotel on North Webster Street, a block off the Capitol Square, and trades on the view as much as the list — the Capitol dome on one side, Lake Monona on the other, and a wraparound terrace that is one of the better places in Madison to be on a summer evening. It is a wine bar and bistro, with small plates built to go with the glass pours.

A wine bar is a structurally hard room for a non-drinker: the entire proposition is the bottle, and the usual alcohol-free option is a soda from the gun. Eno Vino runs a full mocktail menu instead, and the shape of it is telling. The honey ginger lemon spritz and the apple cinnamon mule are long, aromatic drinks that hold up over a meal the way a glass of wine would. The pal-no-ma and the strawberry nada-rita cover the tequila-shaped requests. Most usefully for this particular room, the bar pours Leitz Eins Zwei Zero non-alcoholic sparkling rosé by the glass — a de-alcoholised German wine rather than a grape soda, which means somebody not drinking can order wine, in a wine bar, and be handed wine. That single listing does more for the experience than four mocktails do.

Two practical notes. The hours are evening-only — 4pm daily, to midnight Sunday through Thursday and 1am on Friday and Saturday — so this is a night-out venue rather than a flexible one. And there is a second Eno Vino on Madison's west side with its own mocktail list, including a berries mojito, a blueberry basil crush and a passion spritz; the drinks named here are the downtown location's. Merchant, Lucille and Settle Down Tavern are all within a few minutes' walk around the Square.