$20 for $40 Worth of Wine Flights and Small Plates at the Wine Expo Tasting Room in Santa Monica
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- Diverse wine selection
- Learn from expert staff
- Low prices from direct imports
- Family-owned wineries
The perfect food and wine pairing is like the fateful meeting of destined lovers, best celebrated with a tiny mock wedding presided over by a curmudgeonly pepper mill with a heart of gold. Create a cause for culinary celebration with today's Groupon: for $20, you get $40 worth of wine flights and small plates inside the tasting room at the aptly named Wine Expo in Santa Monica.
Wine Expo is a candy store for wine lovers ranging from casual connoisseurs to dedicated oenophiles. Browse through a staggering selection of unusual wines, including bottles imported directly from small, family-owned wineries in Italy, Spain, and Portugal. While most wines at grocery and liquor stores are milked from a few different grape varieties, Wine Expo carries countless wines descended from scores of grape varieties, creating a wide array of complex flavors. Inside Wine Expo’s tasting room you’ll find enough sparkling, white, red, dessert, and organic wines to fill every barrel in Donkey Kong two times over. The rotating menu includes a variety of wine flights and small plates; recently featured matches include a trio of Italian merlot ($25) with a plate of mixed salami and prosciutto ($23). Palates looking for something lighter and crunchier might choose three pinot grigios ($16) and white corn chips with black truffle and mushroom tapenade ($12).
Proprietor Ali Biglar and general manager/wine director Roberto Rogness are the sultans of this wine shop, and it is their love for all things vino that makes Wine Expo a special place to shop. The focus is and always has been on pairing friendly service with a diverse wine portfolio to create a shopping experience that piques curiosities and palates alike. The Expo has been a potion purveyor in the Los Angeles area for more than 15 years, which is long enough to absorb wine's superpower of only getting better with age.
Reviews
LA Weekly voted Wine Expo Best Tequila Section 2009 and Los Angeles magazine awarded Wine Expo Best Champagne Selection 2007. The Los Angeles Times, LA Weekly, and Tasting Table have featured the shop. Five Citysearchers give Wine Expo a perfect five-star rating, and Yelpers give a near-perfect 4.5 average:
- Most fine wine shops carry a small, well-selected group of grower-producer wines, but a few shops in Southern California are renowned for their depth. That is especially true of Wine Expo in Santa Monica, which has probably the best selection of such wines in California. – Los Angeles Times
- These people are great. They are outspoken in their love for a full spectrum of wines that can be enjoyed with food. They carry a good selection of Italian wines and they usually stock numerous selections priced below $20 (as of 2009)... If you tell them what you're having for dinner and your budget, they can find something that works well for you. – drocto, Citysearch
Need To Know Info
About WINE EXPO
At Wine Expo, named one of the "10 Best Wine & Spirit Shops in LA" by Los Angeles Magazine, racks teem with wine, craft beer, and liquor from every corner of the globe, plus, a generous selection of real Champagne. The knowledgeable staffers on hand know the difference between standard fruity, oak-infused bottles with lackluster taste and knockout wines that accentuate dinners of red meat or red crayons. They help guide oenophiles in selecting Portuguese whites or Tuscan reds, and organic sparkling white wines or a 31-year-old bottle of scotch. At the wine bar, sippers can sample the flavors for themselves, with flights of three whites, three to four reds, or glasses of beer. Small plates accompany the drinks, including mild cheeses, prosciutto, and crostini.