The Resy Guide to Drinking Natural Wine in L.A. Right Now

All Time’s Insta handle is @freakinalltime, which captures the exclamatory energy of this indoor/outdoor husband-and-wife wine bar in Los Feliz. For now it’s takeout only, but a reopen is imminent. Tyler Wells drums up locally sourced seasonal comfort food on an extemporaneous menu that changes nightly — and often drastically. Ashley Wells is freewheeling to match, curating a wine selection that draws from small indie producers, obscure varieties, and brashly immediate flavor profiles. Think: the rare Morgex de la Salle from Ermes Pavese, grown high in the Italian Alps, from the indigenous variety prié blanc.

Although serving classic, mostly southern Thai dishes in Sherman Oaks since 1981, a few years ago ex-Disney animator Justin Pichetrungsi returned to his family’s business, focusing first on the wine list, which has become a modest bastion of top natural wine in the Valley. Pichetrungsi focuses on lean, lively mom-and-pop reds and whites; nearly all of the reds come to table chilled — low-tannin, high-acid, high-impact, like the “Ikewen Tinto” listan negro from Canary Island native Carmen Peña Santana.

This is the dirty hippie of L.A.’s natural wine scene: dark, candlelit, cavernous and (in pre-COVID times) cheek-to-jowl with the millennial hipoisie. Jason Piggott doesn’t have a wine list per se, just a selection of 10 or so wines up on the wall or conveyed, more or less, by word of mouth from barkeep to customer. Much of the excitement is drawn from the on-tap selections, rustic, peripatetic, ever-changing, one-of-a-kind, often concocted based on handshake deals between Pigott and his many connections in the indie wine scene, like a carbonic syrah from Solminer in Los Olivos.

Barsha the restaurant grew out of Barsha the wine shop, the work of Adnen and Lenora Marouani, two chefs who met in, then fled, Las Vegas. The couple did a brisk takeout business during COVID times, with a menu that fuses California and Tunisian accents — the latter a nod to Adnen’s heritage — with items like lamb meatballs or branzino over couscous “risotto.” Adnen also oversees the eclectic wine program, which boasts many natural selections, and includes a dozen wines on tap, some from overseas, like a bracing verdejo blended by the Rueda producers Garciarévalo.

This refurbished space on Silver Lake Boulevard once occupied an old liquor store, and it’s hard to imagine a more complete metamorphosis: a small, airy, brightly-lit retail storefront opens up to a serene garden patio. Zarah Khan’s veggie-forward menu feels like an extension of the garden, with colorful vegetarian plates, salads, preserves, dips, spreads, and roasted veg. Emily Fiffer’s wine list complements the offerings with an array of bright, immediate wines that feel as fresh and verdant as the menu. How about the twiggy “Printemps” from Cahors’ Simon Busser, which twists the region’s malbec and cot into fascinating new forms?

The concept here is based on simple constraints — a raw bar in the extreme, composed of oysters, tartares, pokes, crudos, caviar, and the occasional smoked or pickled item. It all feels unadorned and unassailably fresh, local, and sustainable. Brian Bornemann, formerly of Michael’s, mans the kitchen; the wine program is run by his partner Leena Culhane, a singer-songwriter, visual artist, performer, and plainly the muse of the operation, offering vibrant and forward wines to pair with the pristine fare. That could mean Broc’s Love White, a Rhôneish blend, or Stolpman’s carbonic quaffer from Santa Barbara, Love You Bunches. (Lotta love in these parts.) Wines are available for retail purchase as well as sipping on-site.

Esters has always done double duty as a retail shop by day, wine bar by night, catching spillover from the Rustic Canyon Group’s adjacent sister restaurant, Cassia. Kathryn Weil Coker oversees the place, with sommelier Zaitouna Kusto helping out, stocking the shop’s breadth of selections. It’s practically the definition of a rosé and orange skin-contact sort of place, especially now, with a phalanx of al fresco tables lining Santa Monica’s Seventh Street, where imbibers can catch cool ocean breezes while they nosh on cheese and charcuterie, sipping things like chilled Sempre Cuntentu red, sciaccarelu from Corsican producer Domaine Giacometti.

Spencer and Sabrina Bezaire run this small storefront in a strip mall along busy Sunset Boulevard. Opening right before the pandemic, they pivoted deftly, making a much sought-after local line of hot sauces under the name Sbez, the most incendiary of which, arguably, is the “Karen Melter.” Mara Herbkersman’s list is high energy, bright, and leans Germanic, with small production German and Austrian wines, like the grüner pet nat Kalkspitz (roughly, “chalk-acidity”) from Christopher Hock that’s likely to be the perfect Karen Melter Quencher.

ERB in DTLA’s Arts District mashes up two distinct drinking vibes: a bespoke cocktail bar that feels glitzy and posh, home to a huge spirits selection and one of the city’s most sophisticated cocktail programs; and a beer garden out back that wouldn’t look out of place in Chicago or Munich. April Langford manages a wine list that is all about the glug, with unusual bottlings like the orange from Sonoma’s Subject to Change called Unsung Hero, or Don’t Forget to Soar, Southold Farm & Cellar’s white blend from Texas Hill Country (yes, Texas).

Set on a side street in HiFi (Historic Filipinotown), Grá’s stock-in-trade is pizza, built upon a long-fermented sourdough technique. Proud Irishman Michael McSharry has written a manifesto to fermentation of sorts on the menu’s frontispiece: Indeed, besides pizza, the menu is stacked with pickled things, vegetables, kimchis and krauts. It’s no surprise that McCarry’s wine list has a natural bent, heavy on pét-nats and sour blends made from malvasia and maccabeo, and chewy, earthy reds like La Cuisine de la Mare from Chinon’s Nicolas Grosbois.

Even with new chef Wes Whitmore, this Culver City spot still seems deeply rooted in owners Louie and Netty Ryan’s original vision: fiercely traditional American creations that are historic, southern-tinged, and driven largely by the open hearth in the center of the kitchen. Wine Director Amanda McKenna effortlessly mingles traditional and nontraditional bottlings, whether it’s Viña Gravonia from Rioja’s Lopez de Heredia, or a North Fork of Long Island teroldego from the Hudson Valley’s Wild Arc Farm. Not to mention spirits, rare and singular, found at their adjacent whiskey establishment, Old Man Bar.

After killing it in the Fairfax District, Jon Shook and Vinny Dotolo have taken their talents westward, to Brentwood, continuing the caloric onslaught with saucy pastas, sumptuous pizzas, and heaping salad plates. All of it is supported by the biggest little wine shop in L.A., Helen’s, a back-of-the-house shoebox named for and managed by the group’s wine maven (and podcaster) Helen Johannessen, whose selection, natty and otherwise, completely overdelivers for a pizza joint.

Sara Kramer and Sarah Hymanson decamped to L.A. from Brooklyn, founding the eastern Mediterranean-leaning Kismet in Los Feliz. The menu is California farm-to-table bolstered by an explosive flavor palette: wildly savory and boldly seasoned, featuring a wide array of mezze plates to the restaurant’s showstopper of rabbit, three ways or more. Kae Whalen’s natural selections complement the menu’s sour and spice with piquant wines like Alessandro Viola’s cataratto blanc de blancs from Sicily, or the amber number from Antony Tortul’s La Sorga, made from the rare variety mauzac jaune near Béziers in the Languedoc.

This sliver of a spot operates at the relaxed pace of its owner operator, Max Marder, who comes from a venerable L.A. restaurant family (father Bruce, an investor, also owns Capo and other westside establishments). Pre-COVID, Max ran a high-volume wine program intermingling natural wines and more sought-after French and Italian bottlings. Post-COVID, the list is trimmed, but still devoted to natural causes, which are now being enjoyed in bustling sidewalk seating. It’s as Parisian as it gets in L.A., especially when guzzling Fabien Jouves’ A Table!!! rosé from Southwest France.

Groundbreaking in its 1979 debut, Michael’s has become an iconic Santa Monica restaurant whose kitchen launched literally dozens of California’s most talented chefs. Its wine list, too, has been cutting-edge in its way for decades, even when that meant rich chardonnay, well-rounded zinfandel, or denizens of the American Rhône. Evelyn Goreshnik took over the program in 2020 and has transformed it, trimming the list to about 70 selections, deftly weaving American classics with some of California’s more interesting young producers, with an emphasis on clean expressions of minimalist organic and biodynamic wines. Think of a place where wines from Gut Oggau and Envinate coexist with Rafanelli and Pax. (If you know, you know.)

All three locations — the original on Sunset Boulevard (adjacent to chef Kris Yembamroong’s parents’ traditional Thai restaurant); Song, in Silver Lake; and Sahm, in Venice Beach — serve a slightly pared-down post-COVID menu of pungent curries, larbs, salads and stir fries. Yembamroong and wife Sarah have a fondness for glou-glou: the list, now maintained by Peggy Keplinger, is heady and eminently slammable, as with the tart whole-cluster carignan from Herault producer Edouard Adam, which he calls Tout Sauf L’Ennui (anything but boredom).

Ronan specializes in pizzas — red and white versions, adorning pies with rustic crusts that come out smoky and blistered from a wood fired oven. Daniel Cutler’s menu is complemented by his wife Caitlin’s small but laser-focused wine list, which leans toward texture, with plenty of skin-contact whites, Tuscan reds and their stand-ins, like Martha Stoumen’s nero d’Avola from Mendocino County. Stoumen’s wine, along with all the other wines made by women on the list, are discounted 30% on Wednesdays.