Eureka, a wine rush!
IT'S an automat for wine lovers, albeit one that requires lots of quarters. At Vinum Populi in Culver City, tastes of 48 wines are for sale from "Enomatic" vending machines. With your glass under one of the spouts, you insert a prepaid debit card, punch a button and you've served yourself at the wine bar. An ounce of 2002 Tua Rita Redigaffi: $15.24. Owner Miguel Garza hopes that that thimbleful of wine will convince you to buy a bottle of the Tuscan merlot for $351.92.
The gimmick just might work. Because in wine-thirsty Los Angeles, everything works these days. Wine bars are selling bottles. Wine shops are adding wine bars; chefs are opening wine stores. New fine wine stores are opening all over town, and established shops are expanding.
The new guys are selling more than wine -- they're selling a wine lifestyle. Plans for a downtown wine store-wine bar envisioned by "Top Chef" contestant Stephen Asprinio include museum-style audio wands that deliver recorded spiels about each individual wine that customers can access while they are sipping and shopping.
In six weeks, five Enomatic machines costing a total of $40,000 will arrive at the Wine House to outfit a new self-service tasting room in the center of the West Los Angeles store. "You have to create a social environment," says Jim Knight, whose father founded the store 29 years ago. "We're the biggest store in Southern California. We need to create foot traffic, get people into the store." The new wine drinkers aren't signing up for wine classes, Knight says. They like the idea of self-service.
A Manhattan Beach entrepreneur has launched Wine Styles, a new chain of franchised wine stores with party rooms tricked out with such flourishes as the red organza "love tent" in the chain's Pacific Palisades store. Store owner Thierry Pierre Oliva says the tent creates a supernatural vibe for the fortune tellers he hires to work during wine tastings -- a perfect accompaniment for "spiritual" wines. The bordello red velvet couches and dim lighting, however, scream unbridled hedonism.
It's not all silliness. Mark Peel, chef-owner of Campanile, plans to open a wine store-takeout restaurant/wine bar on La Brea near Melrose this summer. His niche: stocking perhaps 1,000 labels of moderately priced wine -- $10 to $25 -- to take home with the Campanile food available at the takeout counter. "It's something I've always wanted to do," Peel says. "I'm really happy with things at Campanile. So we're doing it now."
