Unique wine and food event celebrates the most popular wines in America’s favorite restaurants based on a poll of the country’s top restaurateurs and wine directors.
Los Angeles, May 16 2019 — In honor of the 30th anniversary of Wine & Spirits magazine’s Annual Restaurant Poll, Editor and Publisher Joshua Greene is pleased to announce that the publication will be hosting WSLA Drink + Eat 2019 in the Arts District of downtown Los Angeles. The event is a benefit for LA Waterkeeper. This celebration of the most popular wines in America’s most popular restaurants will feature more than 80 wineries: All were voted in by the participants in our poll—wine directors at the nation’s most coveted restaurants, from Le Bernardin in NYC to Maude in Los Angeles, and hundreds in between.
The Annual Restaurant Poll asked these influencers to mine their sales data for the last quarter of 2018 and report on their top-selling bottles and by-the-glass wines. The number of mentions of each wine was tabulated and then cross-referenced by their ranking to arrive at the final index.
“Compiling this list over the past 30 years has enabled us to identify trends in restaurants, both in the wines diners like to drink and the bottles sommeliers want to sell,” says Greene. “The classic California brands, focused on chardonnay or cabernet, or sometimes both, once completely dominated the list. Today, they share table space with wines from Rioja, Sancerre, and Barolo. At the turn of the century, pinot noir began to eclipse merlot, and now we’re at a point where grüner veltiner, Malbec, and grenache blanc are no longer perceived as outliers on restaurant lists.”
WSLA Drink + Eat is open to the trade and the public and will take place from 1 to 5 p.m. on June 2 at The Unique Space, 1275 E . 6th Street, Los Angeles, CA, 90021.
Perennial restaurant favorites, such as Duckhorn, Veuve Clicquot, Cakebread and Jordan will be pouring during the event, but so too will artisanal discoveries including Paul Bara, Bernard Baudry, Anthill Farms and Massican. The afternoon will cover a broad swathe of the wine world, ranging from Champagne and sparkling wine, through white, rosé, and red wines, and includes an illuminatingly brilliant lineup of fortified bottlings. The focus of WSLA Drink + Eat 2019 is not only on the international lineup of wineries, Greene notes, but also on the way those wines inspire chefs in the Los Angeles restaurant scene, a community that has become a major force on an international level. “The combination of culinary talent, raw ingredients and the sheer creative energy in the Southern California food scene is unparalleled in the U.S.,” Greene asserts. And many of the top players will be on hand, with chefs from 71 Above, Everson Royce Bar, Faith & Flower, Hippo, Maude, Nomad and Terroni all offering bites designed to accompany the wines. Island Creek Oysters will be located conveniently near the Champagne, and Epicurus Gourmet will provide their specialties, from cheese to charcuterie, throughout the afternoon.
In keeping with Wine & Spirits Magazine’s mission to raise awareness of water conservation issues, proceeds from this event will be donated to LA Waterkeeper, an organization that serves as citizen advocate for the region’s bays, streams and shores. LA Waterkeeper stops polluters, champions public access, influences land use decisions, and restores habitat—benefiting the natural and human communities of our watershed.
General Admission tickets to the event (from 2 to 5 p.m. on June 2) are $85. VIP tickets are $99, and include early access to the event at 1 p.m.. Included in each ticket purchase is a free one-year subscription to Wine & Spirits Magazine (valued at $29.95).
Tickets are available through the WSLA Drink + Eat website: http://www.wineandspiritsmagazine.com/wsla/
