SHOP
2114 W. Colorado Blvd., Los Angeles 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Tuesday; 11 a.m.-11 p.m. Wednesday; 11 a.m.-9 p.m Thursday; 11 a.m.-11 p.m. FridaySaturday; 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Sunday; closed Monday. 323-478-1985
W. Colorado Blvd.
Colorado Wine Company
With most bottles hovering around the $25 mark and a staff with an uncanny ability to render hard-to-parse wine speak into plain English, Jennifer Morgan and John Nugent’s Colorado Wine Company is populist and pretense-free, a neighborly bottle shopslash-wine bar after your own heart. Sure, they’ve got their staple cabs and chards, but they take a certain pride in shelving off-the-beaten-path varietals and littleguy labels in their sip shop. “We like wines that don’t tick off a box,” Morgan said. “It’s really enjoyable to show people wine it never would have occurred to them to take a chance on, like a Hungarian wine or an Austrian red.” Case in point: a Moric Blaufrankisch that Morgan describes as a mildly herbaceous light red.
Smaller production wineries repped in the racks include Black Sheep Finds, a Santa-Barbara-based winery whose Hocus Pocus and Holus Bolus syrahs get snapped up as soon as they’re delivered. Wine accessories stray from chi-chi crystal decanters, striking a balance between functional and funny, like Han Solo ice trays and chocolate molds poached straight from Jabba the Hutt. On any given night, newcomers, returning winos and the occasional Oxy senior with a precocious palate sidle up for the shop’s tasting flights or red or white by the glass. And if it’s not wine they’re after, there’s a back fridge full of brewskis. (Hops to it: CoWineCo’s sudsy sister shop, Sunset Beer Company, opened in Echo Park in September.)
Photos by Walt Mancini
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