Seriously, we must have a few, but I haven’t been anywhere that I would characterize as a wine bar. I think that unlike New York, we don’t have the foot traffic to support wine bars, where people are just going to drop by on their way home at night.
They have a very comfortable lounge area at Cut in Beverly Hills, where it is attractive to sit and you can get decent nibbles, but the wine seriously sucks. I’d stick to hard liquor at that place. Nice place to hang out, so long as you don’t want wine.
I wouldn’t call it a wine bar, but at Eataly in Century City, you can buy a bottle at the Pizza & Pasta bar area and then rather than sitting at the bar, which can be crowded, you can take your wine and glasses and sit wherever you want in the store and nibble to your heart’s content on Roman pizza or sandwiches from the sandwich takeout or desserts from the dessert takeout. You can also do it by the glass, but if I am with enough people, I’d rather grab a full bottle at the bar and take it somewhere else in the store. I’ve never done it, but so long as you have somehow procured wine glasses and you have a corkscrew, you could do the same by buying a bottle at the Eataly wine store. I find the Italian wines on offer at Eataly surprisingly drinkable and they have a good selection of amaro.
Del Frisco’s at the Century City mall has an inner sanctum champagne lounge (you have to specifically ask to be taken there). It’s over the top gorgeous in a kind of Texas way and they have a great selection of champagne. Last time I popped in, it was kind of dead – more of a place for a quiet business meeting or a romantic assignation than a fun lively place to hang out.
I encourage you to go out more. Bar Bandini, El Prado, Stanley’s Wet Goods, Cafe de Garcons, Covell, Augustine, Tabula Rasa tho they are more generalist.
Really like Bandini and Tabula Rasa as @Nemroz mentioned, and also Melody in Virgil Village is great and underrated, often has cool food pop-ups. All three of those places focus on Natural Wine.
Hmmn, you kind of prove my point – all of the ones you mention except Stanley’s are over an hour drive for me in traffic. While I might drive an hour for an amazing meal, I’m not driving across town in traffic to go to a wine bar. For those who live in those neighborhoods or reasonably adjacent, they may be good hangs.
If I happened to find myself in Culver City, Stanley’s looks like an interesting option since apparently they will open any bottle in the store for you for only $4.
Ah, it seemed like you didn’t like them for some other unspecified reason. I like that Domaine LA in particular seems to be curated to the owner’s taste.
I think I have enough wine shops to check out for a future visit in town, regardless of whether they have the selections I want or not, assuming they are on the way somewhere or not too far out of the way, thanks everyone!!
Next question…
we have a few Costco’s in Northern California that have some very interesting selections at reasonable prices. Most recently there have been some great buys up here such as Dr Loosen Riesling Kabinett Blue Slate 2018, Sassicaia’s 2nd wine Guidalberto 2016 (it went super fast), Tignanello 2016, a couple Mersault 1er Cru, random cheap Alsace whites like Zind Humbrecht and Hugel, a Sancerre here or there, small producers of Beaujolais Cru Morgon Cote Du Py and Moulin A Vent etc. And oh a few of them carry sake, but smaller name distributor that many people probably wouldn’t even consider but some might be fun to try at home.
Are there some locations of Costco in LA that are worth visiting that have better selections of wine than others?
Bar Bandini and Tabula Rasa are my two favorite bars in LA. Both are serious about both beer and wine. TR has a reserve sour beer bottle list that has often some pretty killer stuff, also La Morra pizza on Wednesdays.
