TANNINS Wine Bar & Tapas Restaurant — Restaurant in Corpus Christi

If you are in Corpus as a member of the military and have an out of state ID, do not come here. This bar is not military friendly.

My group of five came here for a friend’s birthday. We are all well over the legal drinking age. At first, the waitress took our drink orders and very kindly checked and approved our IDs. Two of us presented our military IDs, and the other three gave our driver’s licenses from out of state (they were Real IDs as well). The waitress walked off to put in the order, but quickly returned to let us know that she needed to take our IDs to her manager to be approved since she realized they were out of state IDs. I was hesitant to let her walk away with my military ID since it has my benefits number and personal data on it, but I complied because I didn’t want to make a scene. She was gone with our IDs for well over 15 minutes, which made us feel anxious because, again, personal information.

A different waiter came back and told us that only the members of our party who had a military ID on them could be served, because out of state IDs had to be approved by the manager, who we missed by 15 minutes. This confused us and made us wonder what they were even doing with our IDs in the back for the last 15 minutes if the manger wasn’t even there. When all was said and done, 4/5 of us could be served, so we opted to leave rather than exclude one person.

I totally understand why out of state IDs might an issue in some situations. Fake IDs are an issue, and I’m not here to try to get these servers in trouble. I do, however, feel that every staff member at a bar should be knowledgeable in checking IDs, or there should at least be one person present who can check out of state IDs. We also felt put off because the final person in our group was clearly over 21, as her license said, and was still denied service. This is a town with a military base; you are going to meet service members from out of state who have IDs from other states. They shouldn’t all have to be grilled and have the IDs taken to the back to drink at your establishment.

We took our business to the other Tannin’s on staples st and had no issues. This location has lost our business, though, and the business of our friends...

This is a smallish place that I have been wanting to try. As a lone diner, I sat at the rather small bar, which could accommodate maybe half a dozen comfortably. When I told the bartender, I had not been there before, I was handed three or four different menus, a testament to their tremendous wine assortment. I narrowed my selection down to an Italian sweet red wine, and ordered the pesto prosciutto flatbread. The flatbread was delicious and almost too much for one meal for one person. I will try the goat cheese flatbread next time. As I sat there sipping my wine, listening to the live music by a single singer/guitar player, and watching golf on the television behind the bar while awaiting my food, I noticed a vat of sangria on the counter. I was super excited, because I love a good homemade sangria. However, a good, homemade sangria almost certainly requires brandy and, unfortunately, if there was brandy in their sangria, it was so minimal as to not be tasted. In fact, I felt like the sangria flavor was totally lacking and for $9 a glass, it should have at least splash of brandy. I will be back, but will not order the sangria again. They also have a wide assortment of bottled and canned beer for the non-wine drinkers...

We have stopped here several times. We live on the Southside so have to be in the area to stop by but honestly its nice enough location to make a special trip just to visit. We stopped in late for a glass of vine and desert after being in the area for our an anniversary. Had the chocolate brownie and a glass of wine each. Didn't get there until about 9:30 on a Monday evening so it wasn't crowded at all. Sat at the bar, there are a couple of TV's so watched the Stanley Cup playoffs while we relaxed. The bartender was as nice as could be. While we enjoyed ourselves several additional groups of folks stopped in so it's clearly a place to enjoy at anytime. One of the groups ordered some grilled quail that smelled amazing. We looked at the menu to see what options would be available when we make our next visit a dinner and wine night. Menu options looked great, haven't eaten any of them yet but they all sounded good. They also have a nice selection of beer available for anyone on your group that isn't into wine or bubbles. Keep up...