J. Sams Wine Bar

Hello 2016!!! My fiancé and I made reservations at A nearby restaurant before coming here with a few friends and family. The Restaurant said they would be open all night *FALSE* so we to celebrate NYE at J.Sams.
No regrets!!! The service here is great! Everyone is accommodating and super nice! The food is perfection! I order the Pimento Cheese, 2 Glasses of Chardonnay, Pork belly Tacos and Pulled Pork Sliders… No Judgement… for the record, they may have a small kitchen, however the food is amazing!
Be sure to checkout the Beautiful artwork on the walls here, I should add my own lol. Not sure how I’ve missed this place! I need to visit more! There’s also a cozy fire pit out front with seating, lovely touch! The wine selection is great. I would highly recommend the Ventana Chardonnay. My personal favorite.
Thank you to everyone at J. Sams for a wonderful NYE

One of my favorite places to spend a Friday evening after dinner. Get the coconut cake, you wont regret it! Owner J Sam is super friendly and always walks around chatting with guests and making recommendations

I absolutely love this place! J. Sams is the man! He is just an awesome person. He doesn’t know a stranger. His staff is great as well. With one of the best wine guys around, he knows everything about wine and bourbon. Sit outside for cigars or inside for art views. You will absolutely love this place! It’s a great spot to enjoy the music on Saturday nights and relax after a long day’s work. Meet you there!

Awesome ambiance & entire staff is helpful plus welcoming. J Sam really goes out of his way to make you feel welcome. Great outdoor area to have a cocktail or smoke a cigar.

This is a wine bar my husband and I visited several times last summer and loved. We recently visited and received inconsistent service but the owner quickly stepped in to correct. We admire the passion J. Sam has to build a quality brand & create a unique wine bar in the area for his customers and friends to enjoy. We are looking forward to visiting again & realizing the J. Sam experience. Thanks again J. Sam.

Absolutely ashamed that I haven’t written a review for this place yet considering I come here at least once a week. This is my local hang out since I live close by. I absolutely love the owner J Sams. He is doing what he loves and it is apparent in how he treats everyone who comes into his wine bar. Such enthusiasm and sincerity! Same can be said for Cameron who is the bartender and also a sommelier. For the couple of negative comments I have read I would say that wine is his hobby, his passion and his livelihood and he takes it very seriously and wants to make sure everyone has the best experience. Maybe you should keep an open mind and try something new! That being said, he is a wealth of knowledge if your preference is something other than wine as well. Love the ambiance at this place, love the fire pits, love the live music and the fun crowd that typically gathers here.

Great food and good wine selection. Lots of healthy options on the menu! Our waiter was very friendly and attentive (it was his first night but I never would have known it if he didn’t tell us, he was very on point). We stayed pretty late for a work dinner/​wine night and they were not all pushy about getting us out to use the table or due to the late hour that we stayed. Honestly, the only reason they didn’t get 5 stars is that I think they should have a price break on buying bottles of wine. Not necessarily on every bottle (I understand if there’s a high cost on some wines), but on some. Other than that it was great. They have a cute outside area as well that I’d like to try next time.

I’ve only been here for a couple of lunch meetings, but food and service are wonderful.
The owner is very friendly and on-​hand.
This is also a gallery space which is a nice treat.
They do some evenings that are more like a gallery opening, which I like.

Very nice place to grab a drink after work! Nice atmosphere and tasty small plates — but very small, don’t come here for dinner because you will have to order about 5 :) service is also a little slow but very pleasant, will def be back.

Great patio and rotating selection of wine, small plates, and desserts. While the small plates menu is itself quite small, the prices are on the high end, a premium that most folks seem willing to pay given J. Sam’s places a high priority on local sourcing. One nice feature: the small plates menu includes a suggested wine pairing for each offering.
On my visit, I enjoyed the jumbo seared scallop and the banh mi shrimp spring rolls with caramel shrimp, pickled daikon, and carrot slaw (below) plus a nice glass of Malbec on their awesome patio overlooking the round at Piedmont Town Center-​the perfect spot to relax and enjoy the live music of Alive After Five on Friday nights.

Our present day Cheers where everybody knows your name! J. Sams makes you feel like you walked into his living room and he’s glad to see you! Best customer service in CLT and Cameron is an awesome bartender/​sommelier!

Love J Sams! The owner, J Sam… duh…is very personable and a great host. He comes and talks to you. The wine selection is excellent! They offer a Croze Hermitage by the glass! I mean WHO in Charlotte offers a Northern Rhone by the glass? J Sams does! Their food selections are limited but of good quality. Charcouterie plate is excellent! Overall a great wine bar. Go during the Friday nite Piedmont Row bash! Great fun!

I am less than pleased about my first experience here on 5÷9÷2014. The male bartender? Cameron? was stuck up and obviously didn’t care about new/​non-​regular customers. When I asked if they carried any NC wines his exact words were «God no! There’s no good wine that comes out of North Carolina!» Wow! That is bull$#!+ because I have 3 bottles of very delish wines that came from one of our local vineyards. Plus Charlotte is a strong advocate for locally grown/​produced goods, thus it is in very poor taste to snob our state’s wineries.
Also, he didn’t bother to come out once from behind the bar to see if my friend and I [who were sitting in the couch section inside that’s maybe 10ft away] wanted another drink… even after we stared at him and he looked over several times [HINT? HINT BUDDY?!] Finally after him not getting the memo (more like not giving a $#it) we got up to go get another drink. Note: he only came out to us right before closing so he could drop off our tab.
The 3^rd strike was right after they closed when I brought our empty glasses to the bar so he wouldn’t have to go grab them… he just looked at us as he stood there doing nothing then continued taking to the friends of the bar still there= not a simple «Thank You» or a «Have a goodnight» as we walked out! Dude, I’m NOT the employee, you are! I was considerate enough to clean up after me and my friend, a simple thank you should have been extended. Had I not been working in hospitality for 15+yrs maybe I wouldn’t have cared about all of this, but because I have, I HATE bad customer service… especially towards new clientele!
If it wasn’t for the owner following my friend and I out to personally thank us for coming and to say goodnight I would never come back here… and I definitely wouldn’t have recommended this place to anyone; in fact, I would have told people to steer clear of it!
So 1 star for the owner, 1 star for the décor and 1 star for the wines being tasty; other than that, the bartender screwed this place out of a 5 star rating from me.

During the insanity that was St. Patrick’s day weekend we decided to duck into J. Sam’s to decompress. The atmosphere was night and day when compared to Taco Mac’s rowdy crowds. We sat at a cozy patio table with a fire pit while next door they were trying to recreate Mardi Gras (including the public drunkenness).
We enjoyed a couple of drinks (their special for the weekend) and tried the duck quesadilla. It was tasty, but a little thin for a quesadilla. We were expecting something a bit more robust.
Overall, it was an incredibly nice place to relax and they played live music accompanied by an amazing singer. I was underwhelmed by the food, but would give it another chance. If you’re looking for a good cocktail and an upscale environment then I’d definitely recommend J. Sam’s.

We tried J Sam’s again to have a drink before dinner at Del Frisco’s and give it another shot, but this time was even worse.
The bartender — Cameron, I think — came over to our high-​top table to give us food and drink menus. When he came back to take our order, I asked how the Autumn Martini was, and he said it was so good that he gets annoyed by how many people order it because of how long it takes to make. Ummm… I’ll take one? To be fair, it was pretty delicious, but I almost felt bad ordering it because of how he complained about having to make it.
When he put our drinks on the table, he grabbed the menus, and I asked if we could keep the drink menu in case we wanted to order another drink. He said, «Seriously?» What the what?!? Is it so rare that we’d want to order another drink? There were only two other couples in the whole place, so I know they weren’t worried about a drink menu shortage.
After that remark, we decided that we actually wouldn’t have one more drink, but it took forever to get our bill because he wouldn’t stop talking to the couple at the bar long enough to come over, so I had to flag down a woman who worked there.
I’ll give anywhere a second chance but not a third. No more J Sam’s for us!

Wine Tasting’s every month!
30 wines to taste for a 20.00 ticket. You can’t beat that.
I’ve walk past this every day as I go to my condo, but I’ve never stopped in till this event. Friends asked me to come down and meet them for the tasting and I am glad I did. I remember this location when it was Dolcetto’s and it is pretty similar in the set up and interior. The best seating is on the patio and I love the little fire-​pit in the evenings. It looks so cozy.
This event was really nice, for 20.00 you get a glass and a list of wines and can walk around from serving station to serving station trying the wines. The pour was a good tasting pour and they had a good range of wines to try.
I am a red drinker and love big boy cabs. I have been a wine drinker for a long time and just recently had to cut down on it for dietary reasons, but I do love the process and the result. So anyway, it was mostly couples but there were some people who mingled a bit, which was nice.
I ended up getting two bottles that I think are going to be great with a nice steak or even a burger and I will definitely be back on a regular night to have a cheese plate and some cab.
The owners were very nice and all the servers were knowledgable.

Friendly staff, but that does not save the appallingly bad food. I can’t speak for the wine list or the cheeses, which appears to be the main draw, but the lunch items were terrible. The bahn mi smelled bad and the chicken in the wrap was slimy.
Honestly, I give one star for the pleasantness of the staff and one «benefit of the doubt» star for wine and cheese.
I want this place to work, but for me, it didn’t.

This wine bar is super cute! The wine selection is nice, plus the artwork on the walls was very interesting to look at and talk about.
I have not tried their food, but it does look good. Both times that I’ve gone to J Sam’s, I’ve noticed the owner there. He interacts with the customers, which is pretty cool!
J Sam’s also has firepits outside, with seating. I haven’t sat out there, but I would love to go back soon to try that out! I thought that was a unique feature to include.

Love J. Sams!
They are a farm to table restaurant which I love. All of their food come from local farms no more than 25 miles from their location. They offer small plates, and cheeses and they offer wine suggestions on most of their food choices.
I loved their wine list. It’s a good wine list when there is Malbec and a Tempernillo on the same list. And by the glass! I ordered the Malbec and I was in love. Owner came to greet us and I felt very welcomed.
This is next to a cigar store so grab a cigar, order some wine out of the patio and start people watching. The only thing is that I felt slightly too young for this place. Most of the people there were well into their late 40s up to I would say late 50s. There were a few mid 20s early 30s sprinkled through out the patio. I wouldn’t say that it would keep me from going, but I’ll make sure to make a better effort of putting on a cuter outfit the next time I decide to come at night. I’ll leave the converse at home next time.

J. Sams is the newest addition to Charlotte’s Piedmont Row located in the SouthPark neighborhood of town. With a great selection of wine and small appetizers, it’s one of my new favorites. Not only is there tons of local art to take in while there, the owner himself J. Sam is there to greet each and every customer giving this wine bar a real ‘neighborhood’ feel.
My favorite part of the place? The servers! The lead bartender is also a sommelier and has great knowledge about each and every wine that is served. That’s a lot more than I can say about other establishments in town that ‘claim’ to be wine bars.
If you’re looking for something new to do in town put J. Sams on your list. I know the next time we get a sitter we’re headed there!