Comments (0) BEST BARGAIN WINE STORE - 2009
K&L Wine Merchants
Finding inexpensive wine is easy. The trick is scoring those bargain sips that you want to buy again — and serve to your dinner guests. K&L Wine Merchants is the kind of place you can walk into with $100 in your pocket and leave with 10, maybe even 12 interesting bottles. They do it by cutting out the middleman and going straight to wineries to stock their shelves. Regular staff tastings help, too. But habitual drinkers, consider yourself forewarned. Once the staff gets a hankering for another wine, or the supply well from a small winery quickly runs dry, your true love may be replaced by the next favorite sip, say a 2007 Jean-François Merieau Gamay for $8 (it is $18 elsewhere) or a 2008 Redtree California Pinot Noir. For most of us, that's half the fun of hunting here, but if you've eaten meatloaf every Tuesday night for the past 20 years, this wine shop probably isn't for you. 1400 Vine St., Hlywd. (323) 464-9463, klwines.com.
—Jenn Garbee
