Whoever said “you can’t take it with you” would have a hard time wrapping their head around the concept of Nicole Daddio’s new wine bar and retail shop, City Sip L.A. The burgundy-colored nook, located in Echo Park just out of earshot of the Echo, has a simple philosophy: When it comes to the wines, beers, meats and gourmet cheeses offered at the bar, go ahead, get it to go.
Normally, taking a bottle of booze home from a bar means a quick grab-and-dash maneuver when the bartender isn’t watching. But we find that behavior unbecoming of the sophisticated drinker. If we achieve anything as winos, let us at least be classier than our parents.
Instead, try it the City Sip way by falling in love with a new wine and buying a bottle to go. The price per bottle ranges from about $10 to $60, so you'll likely find something to suit your budget. Then impress your friends with your newly acquired wine knowledge—knowledge Daddio obtained in snooty sommelier classes so you wouldn’t have to. (Impress your friends even further when they ask why they can’t find that wine at Trader Joe’s.)
For the wine enthusiast looking to advance to upper-division courses, listen up: The food-pairing advice on the side of a box of wine is about as useful as the cereal box maze leading to the Honeycomb Hideout. But you'll get tips galore at City Sip’s Tipsy Tuesday class, held every other week. There, you’ll learn the art of pairing food and drink by actually sampling what works and what doesn’t. “Pairing food and alcohol is all about science,” Daddio says. “It’s all about pH balance. Salty, fatty meats and cheeses go best with wine.”
For all its focus on wine, City Sip hasn’t forgotten about the beer drinker. With four quality beers on tap, including the microbrews Brother Thelonious and Pranqster, you might just rethink the way you chug. Better yet, you might not chug at all, as City Sip will soon offer classes on pairing beers with cheeses to help students unlock and savor the joys of a fine brew. Beer tastes even better with gourmet cheese, we're told, and cheese tastes best with a great back story, particularly the kind City Sip cheese guy Alex Brown tells about their Gouda: “The cheese comes from an area in North Holland, where the cows graze on grass that is 20 feet below sea level and contains blue oceanic clay, which provides the cow’s milk with special minerals.” These conditions, Brown says, make the cheese sweeter and softer. With a story that good, he could have made it up and that Gouda still would have tasted better than cheddar.
Here's another great story: Daddio was an associate producer on “CSI” when she tasted a wine that changed her life. During her 30th birthday dinner at Grace Restaurant, a waiter brought a bottle of Turley Old Vine Zinfandel; it was so good, it inspired Daddio to pursue her own love of the grape. Before long she was hosting wine tastings for her friends in her Echo Park home, and these informal gatherings influenced the current familial vibe of City Sip. (She left “CSI” in March 2007.)
In fact, between sips of your new favorite cabernet, take a look at the back of your City Sip stool. The name engraved on it belongs to one of Daddio's friends, who helped her out when the grand opening approached and her costs tripled. You might say she sells wine with a little help from her friends.
Will Theisen is a contributing editor for Metromix Los Angeles.
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