What it is
Grapeables is the wine bar of Fountain Hills, on Saguaro Boulevard facing Fountain Park, a block from the Avenue of the Fountains and about 30 minutes from Old Town. It started life as a retail wine and cheese shop; its second owners added a bar and a wine club; and in 2014 Jo and Bill McKellips and their son Sam bought it as its third owners and made it what it is now, a small room and a patio built around a list of more than 150 wines from small, mostly family-owned producers around the world. There are flights, pours by the glass and bottles, a retail shelf, and charcuterie and cheese boards assembled to go with a red or a white. For an actual dinner the Italian restaurant a few doors down delivers to your table, which is the local arrangement and a good one.
Live music runs Friday and Saturday nights, and on the patio every fourth Wednesday when the weather allows. The patio is the thing. It faces the park across the street, and the fountain, which fires lit at eight and nine in the evening, goes off directly in front of you.
Why leave Scottsdale for it
Scottsdale has wine bars, and Wine Girl in Old Town pours a deeper list than anything in a town of twenty thousand. The case for Grapeables is not the list; it is the evening. Fountain Hills after dark is a different place from Fountain Hills at noon: the fountain is lit, the town’s dark-sky rules keep the lights low, the lake loop is quiet, and a patio glass with the column of water going up across the street is a thing no bar in Scottsdale can offer. Our Fountain Hills guide calls the evening move stargazing, not bar-hopping, and Grapeables is where you do both.
The practical version
Shea east, right on Palisades, right on Saguaro Boulevard; Grapeables is on the west side facing the park, with street parking and the park lots across the road. Tuesday to Sunday, closed Monday. Flights and boards, dinner delivered from down the street on request, music Friday and Saturday. Decide who is driving back over the saddle before the first pour.
When to go
October through April, Friday or Saturday, arriving around seven: the patio is in season, the band starts inside, and the lit 8 PM cycle happens in front of you with the 9 PM one as a second act. A fourth Wednesday in the cool months puts the music on the patio itself. Summer is quieter and the patio is for the last hour of the day only, but the 9 PM fountain in July, lit, with the lawn finally cool, is one of the better small pleasures of the east Valley. The February and November fairs fill the town; the bar is open and full.
What to order
- A flight. The list is built around producers you have not heard of, and a flight is how the staff tell you about them.
- A board, chosen to match: the red board or the white board, with the cheeses and cured meats arranged to the wine rather than the other way around.
- Dinner from Arrivederci, delivered to the table; ask for the menu and keep the table.
- A bottle to take home, from the retail shelf, which is how the place began and still half of what it does.
With kids
It is a wine bar, and a small one. Fountain Park across the street has the splash pad and the playground for the afternoon; the evening here is for adults.
The neighborhood
Saguaro Boulevard runs along the east side of Fountain Park, with the Avenue of the Fountains meeting it a block north. Sofrita on the Avenue is the earlier dinner if you would rather eat before the glass; Phil’s Filling Station Grill is the next morning. After the last fountain cycle, the lake loop is the walk, and the stargazing note explains why the sky over the lake is darker than it has any right to be twenty miles from Phoenix.
The story
Fountain Hills grew up as a town of winter residents, and a wine shop facing the park was a sensible business for a place where people have time in the afternoon and a view in the evening. Grapeables opened as exactly that, a retail wine and cheese shop on Saguaro Boulevard, and its second owners, Dave and Diane, saw where the customers were going and added the bar and a wine club. In 2014 the McKellips family bought it. Jo and Bill, with their son Sam, built the list toward small producers and family-owned wineries, started the Friday and Saturday music, added the fourth-Wednesday patio nights, and settled the arrangement with the Italian restaurant down the block so that nobody has to leave the patio to eat.
The town made it work. Fountain Hills was certified an International Dark Sky Community in 2018, which means shielded lights, a dark lake and a sky over the park that is the darkest within a half-hour of Scottsdale; the fountain, lit for its evening cycles, is the brightest thing in town for 15 minutes at a time and then it stops. A wine bar with a patio facing that has a show no amount of decorating could buy.
The Scottsdale connection
Scottsdale’s wine bars sit on Old Town streets and Kierland sidewalks and look at each other. Grapeables looks at a lake. A good share of its weekend tables are Scottsdale couples finishing a Fountain Hills day, and the wine club is full of Shea corridor residents who find the drive over the saddle shorter than the drive to Old Town. It is, in the end, the neighborhood wine bar for the far side of the McDowells, and the neighborhood extends farther west than the town line.
Getting there
Shea Boulevard east from the Loop 101, over the saddle into Fountain Hills; turn right on Palisades Boulevard, then right on Saguaro Boulevard, and Grapeables is on the right facing the park, a block before the Avenue of the Fountains. Thirty minutes from Old Town, fifteen from the Shea corridor, 35 from the Camelback resorts. Street parking in front and the park lots across the road. The drive back is Shea over an unlit saddle, which is the whole argument for a designated driver or a room at the Fountain Park Hotel across the park.