The Boston Licensing Board has suspended Barcelona Wine Bar's liquor license for three days after finding that the South End restaurant served alcohol to seven underage patrons during an unannounced May inspection, and now the tapas chain says it will keep pouring its signature communal drink — just without any actual wine in it.
The board voted Thursday to suspend the license for the location at 525 Tremont St., following a hearing that detailed how Boston Police Department licensing detectives found two separate tables of underage drinkers during the spot check, according to Boston.com. Detectives said none of the patrons at those tables looked like the pictures on their IDs, and police noted that some of the IDs were actually verified as belonging to friends or family members, per the same report.
At one table, six underage women were served alcohol after a waiter checked their identification but never scanned it, despite restaurant policy requiring ID scans, the outlet reports. Barcelona Wine Bar attorney Tyler Henseler told the licensing board that the restaurant fired that waiter for failing to use the scanner. A second waiter serving a table with one underage patron was not disciplined, Henseler said, because the restaurant's internal investigation found she had not been served alcohol — though police detectives said she did have an alcoholic drink sitting in front of her even though she had not ordered one, and she produced a fake ID when questioned by police.
Detectives Also Flagged a Bartender Standing on the Bar
Beyond the ID failures, police detectives observed a bartender standing on top of the bar while pouring wine from a traditional porrón directly into a customer's mouth — a practice Boston licensing regulations prohibit outright, the report states. The porrón itself is a traditional Spanish glass vessel built with a narrow spout so multiple drinkers can share from one container without touching it to their lips, a design that dates back to its origins in Catalonia, Spain.
Keeana Saxon, representing the licensing board, said the restaurant experienced failures on all fronts, according to the report. Saxon added that employees overlooked fake IDs and failed to scan them properly, and said the presence of out-of-state identification should have prompted staff to ask for a backup form of ID before serving anyone.
Restaurant Says It Has Fixed Its ID Process
Henseler told the board that the incidents from May 10 received the restaurant's full attention, and that Barcelona Wine Bar handled the fallout through an internal investigation and employee consequences, the outlet reports. He said the company takes its responsibility as a liquor license holder very seriously. Since the inspection, Barcelona Wine Bar has ordered more ID scanners and updated its ID-checking policy to be more thorough, according to the report; the restaurant is represented in the matter by the law firm Upton, Connell and Devlin, and Kristen Plotts serves as the regional director overseeing the South End location.
Under Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 138, Section 34B, liquor licensees only get legal protection against underage service claims if employees reasonably relied on one of four accepted forms of ID — a Massachusetts driver's license, Mass Liquor ID, U.S. passport, or U.S. military ID — meaning out-of-state licenses carry legal risk for the business regardless of how convincing they look. The same statute exposes underage patrons who use fake or borrowed IDs to misdemeanor charges, court fines, and an automatic driver's license suspension of six months to a year through the Registry of Motor Vehicles.
Juice and Soda Replace Wine in the Signature Pour
Going forward, Barcelona Wine Bar says it will continue its theatrical porrón tradition using a mixture of juice and soda rather than wine, and the drink will be poured from the ground or, at most, from a chair — the bartender will no longer serve it while standing on the bar itself, according to the report.
The South End location is one of three Barcelona Wine Bar outposts in the Boston area; the chain also operates in Brookline and in Cambridge, and has grown to more than 20 locations nationwide. Barcelona Wine Bar was founded in 1996 in South Norwalk, Connecticut, by Andy Pforzheimer and Sasa Mahr-Batuz as a 38-seat tapas spot before its parent company was acquired by private equity firm L Catterton as part of a $650 million purchase in 2019.
The disciplinary action lands amid a broader push by Boston regulators to reshape the city's liquor licensing landscape, following 2024 state legislation authorizing 225 new neighborhood-restricted licenses meant to widen access beyond the private secondary market, where permits have historically traded for as much as $600,000 — a shift Hoodline has covered in local liquor upgrades.
