‘Ineffable’ is the word Lou Amdur uses when describing his attraction to wine. He groups wine with love and friendship as being beyond description in terms of his ardency for them.
When I first met him in the 2000s, I immediately recognized him as a champion of wine, especially wine made from marginalized grapes. I came to regard him privately as the patron saint of the forgotton grape- probably pineau d’aunis, an obscure grape that he gallantly promotes.
Lou’s story of how he found his path in the world of wine is really one of inevitability and of his responding to the stimulations of a life beyond software development, his previous career. He caught himself at various moments in his life acting like a wine geek. Eventually he had to admit to himself that he belonged among the bottles. His new career was also completely self-made. After deciding that he would start a Paris-style wine bar in L. A., he saved for 5 years until he had enough capital to be able to get underway with no partners or family members pitching in.
The place was unique. Garrisoned in the crook of a misbegotton mini-mall on the edge of Hollywood, one entered into a warm modernist dining room with well-sourced, good food and reliably unique wines by the glass.
The attenuated arc of the restaurant was caused by a bad landlord and the untenable condition of his building. It had been open for seven years.
After a brief stop barnstorming his new retail wine concept next to Squirl Restaurant, he moved up the street to Los Feliz and the permanent home of Lou Wine and Tastings.
It is here that a wine vision is being realized with the rapid comings and goings of hundreds of highly unique wines and a discourse that includes considerations of history, gastronomy and community emanating forth from Lou.
There is no doubt that Lou’s shop provides the most arcane and stimulating wines in Los Angeles. If there is a half-hectare vineyard of a recently rediscovered ancient grape clinging to the side of a mountain in the French Alps, you can be sure that you will get to try its wine at the shop.
The wines he stocks are also noteworthy for their purity and their ‘natural’ constituency, meaning that most fall squarely into the niche market that has become known as ‘natural wine’. Though a definition of ‘natural wine’ is debatable with some versions tasting more like cider than wine and other versions simply having detestable qualities, Lou will fight you if you aquaint his business with other purveyors of skitchy natural wine. The winemakers that he deals with are masters of their craft and their wines rely on traditional winemaking, meaning from organic grapes, without chemical inputs, introduced yeast or new oak flavors.
Ironically, whereas Lou was looking forward to a career as a wine obscurantist, he now also finds himself handing out newly-popular pet-nat in volume to an eager public.
Lou lost a comrade in arms when Jonathan Gold died. They had known each other and while Gold instructed Lou on eating in L.A., Lou, no doubt, supplemented Gold’s considerable knowledge of wine with his own. Like Gold did, Lou uses his influence and knowledge in an effort toward a better understanding of his city through the sharing and promotion of things that you’d want to put in your mouth.
Notes:
a.o.c. opened in 2003- I really should have remembered this
Kris Yenbamroong is the chef/owner of Night+Market in Los Angeles and Venice.