GRAPES Weinbar

A former pass built for wine

Ferdinand Kretz set small plates against deep cellar work when he led the kitchen at GRAPES Weinbar in Munich, keeping the pass in service of the glass. Ferdinand Kretz later became Chef de Cuisine at POTS at The Ritz-Carlton Berlin, but his Munich chapter belongs to a different discipline: restraint, timing, and the ability to let a wine bar remain a wine bar. He had trained at Grand Spa Resort A-Rosa Sylt, held positions at Restaurant Kai 3 Sylt and Waldhotel Sonnora under Clemens Rambichler, and later worked at Restaurant Tantris under Benjamin Chmura. At GRAPES Weinbar he co-led the kitchen with Lisa Schröder, whom he had met during apprenticeship on Sylt. The work here did not ask for a chef to dominate the room. It asked for enough craft to carry a long evening, enough salt and fat to meet acidity, and enough confidence to stop before the plate crowded the bottle.

Small plates for a long list

The program at GRAPES Weinbar is built around wine first, with a kitchen that keeps its range narrow and useful. The list runs to over 1,000 options by glass and bottle, with rare vintages, natural wines, international bottles, and a separate rarities card for deeper cuts. Against that scale, the food stays concise: marinated olives, pinchos with guacamole, salmon, or beef tartare, then a short run of starters and mains such as ceviche, tarte flambée, and boeuf bourguignon. Wiener Schnitzel anchors the Monday rhythm, served with potato and bird salad, pumpkin seed oil, cranberries, anchovies, and lemon. A vegetarian tarte flambée sits beside it rather than as an afterthought. This is not a kitchen trying to outtalk the cellar. It gives the hands something exact to do, then leaves room for Burgundy, Bordeaux, Hungary, Lebanon, Austria, Italy, California, Champagne, pet-nat, and the bottle someone at the table did not expect to meet.

The room keeps the bottle moving

The room sits at Ledererstraße 8a in the Altstadt-Lehel district, inside the Cortiina Hotel, but it behaves less like a hotel amenity than a working wine bar with its own pulse. The counter carries the evening first. Glasses move through the light, music holds the room at conversation level, and the service has to read both the collector asking for an allocation and the guest who wants a glass described by texture rather than appellation. The by-the-glass language helps: fruity and elegant, spicy and satin, direct enough to start a conversation without flattening the wine. Plates arrive as ballast, not interruption. Schnitzel, tartare, olives, cheese, oysters in season, each one gives the cellar another way to speak. The close attention here is not decorative; it is the method that keeps GRAPES Weinbar legible from the first glass to the last Wiener Schnitzel.