Wine tasting in Los Angeles usually means one of two things: a room where someone talks at you for an hour, or a drive to Santa Barbara County. Bar Bandini, in a low building on Sunset Boulevard in Echo Park, is a third option that most tasting guides miss entirely, because it does not present itself as a tasting room at all. It is a bar that happens to pour a rotating list of small West Coast producers, most of it from a keg.
Bandini pours to 2am, which almost nothing else in this category does. Ask Karpo which Echo Park rooms still have a seat at the bar tonight.
Why the tap changes the tasting
Almost everything here is natural or organic, almost all of it Californian, and much of it arrives on tap rather than by the bottle. That is the whole reason the by-the-glass list behaves differently from a conventional wine bar's. A kegged wine does not oxidise the way an opened bottle does, so a bar pouring from kegs can keep an unusual pour on the list for weeks without watching it die, and can price a glass closer to what a bottle would cost per serving. In practice it means the list is longer, stranger and less conservative than a bottle programme of the same size could afford to be.
It also means the list is genuinely worth reading rather than defaulting to. The selections are written up on black letter boards, which is a small thing that changes the room's behaviour — you look up, you compare, you ask, instead of scanning a laminated card and ordering the second-cheapest red out of habit.
The room itself
Dark painted walls, suede banquettes, black slate surfaces, rough exposed wood, low pendants. It reads as a date bar and a Tuesday bar at the same time, which is not a common combination and is most of why regulars treat it as a default rather than an occasion. There is a back patio, which in Echo Park is the difference between a bar you leave at eleven and a bar you stay in. Craft beer and off-beat ciders are on tap alongside the wine, so the group where one person does not drink wine is not a problem to be solved.
Food is deliberately light — olives, cheese, simple bar snacks rather than a menu. The cheese in particular has a reputation among regulars that outruns its description on the board. If you want dinner, eat first; if you want three hours of drinking with something to pick at, this is built for exactly that.
Reading a list like this without a sommelier
Natural wine lists are written for people who already know the producers, which is intimidating and unnecessary. Three shortcuts get you most of the way. First, look for the grape and the region before the producer name — a Californian carignan and a Californian chardonnay will tell you more about what is coming than any importer's name will. Second, ask what is chilled; on a list like this the interesting reds are often served cold, and if you order one at room temperature you are drinking a different wine than the bar intended. Third, if a pour tastes odd rather than bad, that is usually the point — low-intervention wines carry more cloudiness, more fizz and more farm character than a supermarket bottle, and the bar will happily tell you which end of that spectrum a glass sits on if you ask before ordering.
The hours are the actual secret
Bandini is open Monday to Thursday from 4pm to 2am, and Friday to Sunday from 3pm to 2am. That 2am close is the detail that separates it from nearly every other natural wine bar in Los Angeles, most of which shut between 10pm and midnight. It makes Bandini the place you go after the thing — after a show at the Echoplex, after dinner in Silver Lake, after a late shift — rather than the place you plan the night around. If you have ever finished a meal at 10:30 and discovered that every wine list in the neighbourhood has closed, this is the answer to that problem.
There is also a fixed weekly anchor: the Better Half Comedy Show runs every Wednesday at 8pm. Turning up at 8:15 on a Wednesday expecting a quiet glass is a mistake in one direction; turning up specifically for it is a good Wednesday. Either way, know which one you are doing before you walk in.
How to actually taste here
Order across the list rather than down it. Ask for two contrasting pours at once — a chilled light red against an orange wine, say — and taste them side by side, which is the thing a tasting room charges you forty dollars to organise and a tap list lets you do for the price of two glasses. Ask what has just gone on tap; because kegs turn over, the newest line is usually the one the staff are most interested in talking about. And go early in the week if you want the conversation. Weekends here get properly busy, and the bar staff have less room to walk you through anything.
Getting there is the last piece. Bandini sits on the stretch of Sunset between Echo Park Avenue and Alvarado, which is walkable from most of Echo Park and a short ride from Silver Lake, Los Feliz or Downtown. The block has a run of bars and restaurants either side of it, so the failure case — arriving to a full room — has a two-minute solution rather than a twenty-minute one.
Practical notes
Bar Bandini, 2150 Sunset Boulevard, Echo Park, Los Angeles. Open Monday to Thursday 4pm to 2am, Friday to Sunday 3pm to 2am. Natural and organic wine plus craft beer and cider, largely on tap, mostly small West Coast producers, with the list written on letter boards behind the bar. Light bar snacks only. Back patio. Better Half Comedy Show every Wednesday at 8pm. Card and contactless accepted. Sunset Boulevard parking in Echo Park is street-only and tight after 8pm — the walk from Echo Park Avenue is shorter than the third lap of the block.
Tags: #LosAngeles #EchoPark #BarBandini #WineTastingLosAngeles #NaturalWine #WineOnTap #LAWineBars #SunsetBlvd #LANightOut #CaliforniaWine #LateNightLA #OrangeWine #LABars #SilverLake
Please drink responsibly. Must be of legal drinking age.
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Ask Karpo first
Want to know what has just gone on tap, whether the patio has space, and which Echo Park rooms are still pouring at midnight? Ask Karpo for tonight's Sunset Boulevard wine plan, a realistic arrival time, and a backup two minutes away if Bandini is full.
