Pictured: A peek into the award-winning wine room at Osteria 500. Photo courtesy of Osteria 500.

Osteria 500 opened in July of 2023, but it has already made a splash in Sarasota’s culinary scene. Foodies have fallen in love with the eatery’s exquisitely crafted authentic Italian cuisine, and earlier this year the restaurant received a prestigious Gambero Rosso award. Now Osteria 500 has added to its impressive accolades as the recipient of the Wine Spectator Award of Excellence.

Wine Spectator is a lifestyle magazine that focuses on wine culture and ratings and is widely respected as one of the premier publications on wines. Each year, the magazine highlights restaurants that have curated wine lists that are not only superlative in their own right, but that also pair exceptionally well with the food that is served. To be recognized in this fashion in the first year of operation is a truly remarkable feat, and much of that credit goes to Carmine Ussano who is a co-owner of Osteria 500 and serves as the wine director.

“What we try to do at Osteria 500 is to be 100% authentic,” says Ussano. “We make our own bread, we make our own pasta, we make our own sauces, we make our own sausage. With this concept of being super authentic, my thought with the wine list was to be even more authentic.”

Ussano has managed to curate a wine list that is wide-ranging, yet thoughtful and unique. While there is one page devoted to wines from “the rest of the world”, the focus is primarily on Italian wines. The wine list is organized by region, so reading through it is almost like taking a journey through Italy. In addition to co-owning Osteria 500, Ussano has run a private tour company in Italy for the past twenty years. In that time, he has cultivated relationships with small family vintners who don’t even have websites, much less distributors. WIne enthusiasts who are on the lookout for something new are bound to stumble on some hidden treasures on the Osteria 500 wine list.

“One of the most iconic winemakers in Italy at the moment, it’s very hard to even contact him,” Ussano says. “He doesn’t have a website, he doesn’t have an office, no one works for him. He does everything himself. Sometimes I have to wait four, five, six months to get wine from him.”

Ussano’s willingness to go above and beyond to source these special and unique bottles of wine is just one of the things that elevates the wine experience at Osteria 500. He also designed the temperature-controlled wine room which holds between 2000 and 2500 bottles of wine and displays all of the labels, and invested in a system that preserves an open bottle of wine (even sparkling ones) for 21 days.

“Because of that we have the opportunity to have wines like Barolo or Brunello by the glass as well as some other unique wine blends that you usually don’t find on a wine list by the glass,” Ussano says.

The issue of  Wine Spectator that recognizes Osteria 500 will be on newsstands on August 31, 2024, or you can visit the magazine’s website at winespectator.com/restaurants to see the award recipients.

Osteria 500, 1580 Lakefront Dr., Sarasota, 941-866-8962, osteria500.com.

Pictured: A peek into the award-winning wine room at Osteria 500. Photo courtesy of Osteria 500.