LA Drinks Charles Kelly/Guest

‘Ineffable’ is the word Lou Amdur uses when describing his attraction to wine. He groups wine with love and friendship as being beyond description in terms of his ardency for them. When I first met him in the 2000s, I immediately recognized him as a champion of wine, especially wine made from marginalized grapes. I came to regard him privately as the patron saint of the forgotton grape- probably pineau d’aunis, an obscure grape that he gallantly promotes.Lou’s story of how h...

We continue our conversation with Adam Weisblatt, who is a principle in Last Word Hospitality, a consulting firm with a healthy list of high-profile restaurant clients. In 2015, at the tender age of 30, Adam teamed with Holly Fox, formerly a project manager at entertainment group SBE. Since then, the two have helped consult on all aspects of the successful launching and running of restaurants, bars and other businesses. This means soup to nuts: from establishing ...

Today, while seeking out more beverage truths about Los Angeles, we take a slight detour to the subject of creating success in an eating and drinking establishment. And we ask about the unique role that a beverage program has in this undertaking. Our guest is Adam Weisblatt, a principle in Last Word Hospitality, a consulting firm with a healthy list of high-profile restaurant clients. In 2015, at the tender age of 30, Adam teamed with Holly Fox, formerly a project mana...

Caroline Styne is a successful restaurateur and a partner in the Lucques Group. She and her partner, Suzanne Goin, are also responsible for the first self-conscious ‘small plates’ restaurant in Los Angeles, a.o.c., which began a trend that is still going strong today. In doing so, she also initiated a vast by-the-glass wine program that not only provided many options to diners eating an unusual variety of things for dinner, she also made sure that those wines were really good and ...

Patrick Comiskey should be well-known to those who read the Los Angeles Times or who seek out writing about wine. He has been a regular fixture with the Times and, more recently, with the wine and spirits blog 750 Daily with many articles advising about smart wine drinking as well as various aspects of the Los Angeles wine world such as the legacy of Piero Selvaggio of the recently-closed Valentino restaurant or a story about L A wine tasting groups going back to the 60’s and the future...

Today we’re talking to Zach Negin who is the owner of Tabula Rasa Bar in Thai Town. Rather than talking about drinks per se, we take a look inside an establishment that is on the front lines of what we should think of as an L. A. wine bar. In the past few years wine bars have been staking out territories across L. A. and in some cases they have been emphasizing low-intervention or so-called ‘natural’ wines (not to mention artisanal beers). Tabula Rasa is such a place.&...