Wine Bars 2.0

Bookstores and coffee shops have become great places to taste wine, and restaurants are offering their own new ways to tap into wine trends.

Prairie Lights wine bar in Iowa City. Photo © Cathy Sunu.

The New Tasting Rooms

These unconventional wine bars appeal to connoisseurs of all kinds, from beer geeks to artisanal-cheese fanatics to book lovers.

Bouley Bakery. Photo © Nicole Bartelme.

This hip new bar puts equal emphasis on small-production beers and wines.

A favorite of David Sedaris's, this cult bookstore added a wine bar to pay homage to a literary society that drank there in the 1930s.

David Bouley now turns his stellar bakery into a wine bar at night, with pours in amounts as small as an ounce. To eat: a great cheese selection.

This excellent micro-roaster's first café serves flights of rare coffees, as well as wines selected by former Herbfarm sommelier Tysan Dutta.

Photo © Two Urban Licks

The restaurant stores its entire list of more than 40 American wines in stainless steel kegs.

Sang Yoon sells both wine and beer on draft at the Culver City branch of his beer-centric bar and restaurant.

The eco-conscious new Jack London Square restaurant serves more than half of its locally driven wine list from kegs.

Melissa Perello's new restaurant sells two house wines on tap, custom-blended by California's Core Wine Company.

Published April 2010