Recommends

Melissa Gage

Joined 7 years ago

Citysearch Editorial Review. You don't have to be an oenophile to appreciate having a personal wine guru walk you through some of Italy's finest and rarest wines. In fact, the more you want to learn, the better. Enter Vinissimo, a wine distributor that supplies the likes of Mozza, Campanile and Barbrix, not to mention top restaurants in San Francisco, New York and beyond. You'll have to make an appointment to stop by the cubby-like space, which is well hidden in an unassuming strip of Pasadena businesses. And you won't get to taste any of the offerings (sorry, no liquor license here), but the entire experience is based on trust. The point is to start a dialogue with your personal wine connoisseur, aka your self-proclaimed "spiritual advisor," who gets to know your tastes and stands behind every hand-picked bottle of small-batch wine. The bar is set incredibly high to join the Vinissimo portfolio: it takes three years of tasting for quality and consistency before a producer makes the cut, and if a vintage falls short one year down the road, it's out. The wine gurus at Vinissimo have personal relationships with every producer, have visited every vineyard and have the photos to prove it. This is hand-crafted wine of the highest quality, so don't expect to recognize the labels (unless, of course, you've had a glass at a local restaurant) and you certainly won't find these bottles at your local wine store. Sounds expensive, right? Not necessarily. Bottles start around $12 and go to more than $100, with plenty in between.