A new wave of wine bars is shaking up the dining scene, but preset expectations about what a wine bar should be can work against would-be operators. A full-fledged restaurant, for example, isn’t a wine bar, nor is a wine shop with a little tasting area.
When Yuka Ioroi, co-owner of Cassava, looked over distributor wine lists for her spin-off wine bar, she saw one or two minority-owned producers and wanted to spotlight them.
LouVino
LouVino is a restaurant and wine bar with an extensive selection of wines. The restaurant’s menu features small plates influenced by Southern cooking, and the bar offers a variety of bourbon, craft beer, and cocktails. The restaurant has a number of locations across Indiana and Kentucky, including one in the Nickel Plate District. The restaurant also has outdoor patio seating and is pet-friendly.
The restaurant has a large bar with more than 60 wines by the glass, 90 total wine varieties available, and wine flights. The veneto trattoria restaurant also serves brunch and dinner, and features a private dining room for rehearsal dinners or business meetings. The menu is designed by chef Tavis Rockwell and includes a variety of wines and food to suit every palate.
A Midwest native, Rockwell grew up watching countless cooking shows and helping his grandparents manage their small farm. He completed the culinary arts program at Sullivan University and specializes in reinvented Southern-inspired small plates. His dishes, such as loaded baked potato stuffed tots, chocolate beignets, and pancake tacos, have earned LouVino multiple accolades.
The menu at the Mass Ave location is both playful and sophisticated, offering everything from fried chicken tacos to seared scallops over black quinoa with goat cheese cream and fried dill fronds. The wine list is easy to understand, with wines grouped in categories honoring famous Indiana folk.
Taste Restaurant & Wine Bar
Sisters Leslie and LeAnn Jones opened this wine bar and shop to keep Inglewood locals from leaving town for their wine tasting needs. Chef Kyndra McCrary’s salmon sliders, charbroiled oysters and hubbard squash risotto perfectly complement the 90 percent Black-owned wines on tap.
Sit at the sleek backlit bar or settle into the moody chocolate brown and burnt umber dining room for well-constructed dishes that are clean in flavor. Eli Zabar draws on his expertise from his flagship store and DTLA Cheese for the wine selections, while also providing a variety of tin snacks from his Downtown outpost.
Taste Restaurant & Wine Bar is the first of its kind in Amador County Wine Country. The restaurant is a favorite of many locals and tourists alike. The restaurant has received national recognition for their wine pairings.
Bar Vinazo
Joe Campanale and Ilyssa Satter, the Brooklyn restaurateurs behind Fausto on Flatbush and LaLou on Vanderbilt, have brought that same tasty, tipsy vibe to Park Slope with Bar Vinazo. The new wine bar explores the pleasures of Spain with an extensive selection of organic, biodynamic wines and a tailored food menu. The design, a former toy store, is sleek and light with an expansive pine and terracotta bar displaying bottles of wine and a show-stopping Cinco Jotas jamon carving station in full view of all the tables.
The menu is divided into six sections: pica pica, tapas, quesos, carnes, and platos, with conservas—tinned seafood dishes like berberechos cockles in brine and zamburinas bay scallops in tomato sauce—also joining the mix. The tortilla espanola, a four-inch pie topped with charred ramps, is a favorite, as is the grilled octopus and calamari with piquillo peppers. No Spanish wine bar would be complete without jamon, and the restaurant offers up the coveted black label of Cinco Jotas, the free-range, acorn-fed ham that’s considered one of the best in the world.
The bar features a well-rounded list of 150 natural, organic, and biodynamic wines. The cocktail program also reflects the Spanish theme, with classic drinks imparted with flavors from Catalonia, Galicia, and Basque Country. The owners have even included a sherry list that reflects the region’s rich heritage.
Wine Bar by Cassava
After beloved modern California cuisine restaurant Cassava relocated last fall from its Balboa Street location to Columbus Avenue in North Beach, the James Beard Award-nominated owners Yuka Ioroi and Kris Toliao took a little time off before planning their next project. This week, they finally launched a spin-off wine bar in their old space in the Richmond. The aptly named Wine Bar by Cassava offers a short food menu, including burrata toast, short rib croquettes and ham hock terrine. Guests can also bring in dishes from neighborhood restaurants and the Wine Bar will re-plate them for a small fee.
Ioroi has a clear mission in mind for the new space: she wants to highlight BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color)-owned wineries. When looking at distributor wine lists for the Bar, Ioroi was disappointed to see that only a few wines were highlighted. She has made it a point to include a number of minority producers in her bar’s lineup, from the Sierra Nevada Pinot Noir produced by Ordaz Family Wines, run by a Mexican American couple, to the funky orange-hued Verdello from Richmond’s Purity Wine.
She also plans to offer a handful of whites and reds from Europe’s established regions that are worth the extra expense. She believes these wines will help draw attention to the under-represented communities that make up Cassava’s clientele.