61 Bottles of Weird, Beautiful Chaos
· Los Angeles · New American Wine Bar · Visit Website ↗
Reviewed by the RagingWine Tasting Desk · September 29, 2026
RagingWine reviewed Bar Chelou’s wine list and gave it The Wild Card — RagingWine’s Vibe-Check rating. How RagingWine reviews wine lists →
Wingman Metrics
The wine list at Bar Chelou reads like a love letter written by someone who spent too long in the Loire, took a detour through Piedmont, and somehow ended up in a natural wine cave in Languedoc. It's 61 labels deep, priced between $48 and $235 a bottle, and almost nothing on it is familiar — which is exactly the point. This is not a list built to comfort you; it's built to surprise you.
The list skews heavily French and Italian with detours into Spain and California, and the producers are the kind of names you'd expect to see chalked on a blackboard at a Paris cave à manger — Domaine de la Pépièr, Domaine des Deux Anes, Emmanuel Haget. The Piedmontese Erbaluce from Chiussuma and the Paolo Foppiani Malvasia Blend from 2017 signal genuine range and a willingness to go obscure without going pretentious. There's a dedicated pét-nat section — Macabeu from Jordi Llorens, Blaufränkisch from Trail Marker, Pinot Noir from Es d'Aqui — which is either ambitious or chaotic depending on your mood. The sparkling section alone runs from Maison Crochet's Blanc de Blancs at $68 all the way up to a 2011 Le Brun Servenay Extra Brut Grand Cru at $164, giving the list real vertical ambition.
Nine pours by the glass, running $15 to $18, which is genuinely honest pricing for Los Angeles in 2024. The BTG selection spans sparkling, white, skin contact, rosé, and red — every category gets a seat — and the pour list pulls from the bottle list rather than being a dumbed-down afterthought. The Domaine de la Pépièr Muscadet at $15/glass is the obvious entry point, and the Emmanuel Haget Pineau d'Aunis & Cab Franc at $18/glass is the one to order if you want to start a conversation.
The Bottom Line
Bar Chelou is the rare LA wine bar that actually commits to a point of view — weird grapes, honest prices, producers you'll Google mid-dinner. The BTG range alone makes it worth a stop, and the bottle list rewards the curious without punishing the budget. If you like knowing exactly what you're getting, go somewhere else. If you like being pleasantly confused, pull up a stool.
· Los Angeles · French tasting menu
Mélisse is a destination for Champagne completists willing to pay fine dining prices for the privilege of choosing between four Philipponnat vintages or three Krug editions in a single sitting. But if you're hoping for a wine list that matches the ambition of a French tasting menu — with depth across regions and styles — the narrowness here will leave you wanting. Come for the bubbles, manage your expectations for everything else.
Plays It Safe
Steep
Varietal Specific
Knowledgeable & Friendly
Set & Forget
Proper
Los Feliz · Los Angeles · New American and Middle Eastern
Kismet earns its Wild Card badge because it's doing something genuinely interesting with its wine program inside a casual Los Feliz storefront — Slovenia and natural wine in a room full of freekeh fritters and Persian-style rice is a specific point of view, and we respect it. We can't quote you bottle prices or name specific pours from here, so go in curious, ask the staff what's on, and trust that someone in that room knows what they're talking about.
Small but Thoughtful
Fair
Basic Stemmed
Knowledgeable & Friendly
Set & Forget
Acceptable
· Los Angeles · French Mediterranean
The Little Door is punching above its weight for a 27-bottle list — the Old World focus is genuine, the by-the-glass breadth is impressive, and the pricing mostly plays fair. We'd send a friend here specifically to drink by the glass and work through the more offbeat picks like the Ruche or the Forge Cellars Riesling.
Small but Thoughtful
Fair
Basic Stemmed
Rotating Cast
Set & Forget
Acceptable
· Los Angeles · Pizza and Natural Wine
Pizzeria Sei earns its Wild Card badge because it's doing something genuinely uncommon: running a natural-wine program inside a pizza-obsessed, no-frills room on Pico Blvd without making either the pizza or the wine feel like an afterthought. We can't give you specific bottle recommendations until we get a verified list in hand, but if you trust the kitchen — and most people do — extending that trust to the wine program is a reasonable bet.
Small but Thoughtful
Fair
Basic Stemmed
Willing but Green
Set & Forget
Acceptable
Beverly Hills · Los Angeles · Steakhouse
What we can document at Mastro's Beverly Hills is a narrow, Napa-centric selection that plays zero risk and offers zero surprise — which is a defensible choice for a power-steakhouse crowd, but not one we can enthusiastically endorse to wine lovers. The seven wines on record are all from a single event page, so the full list is almost certainly broader; but until we have more to work with, our honest advice is to know what you want before you sit down, because the list isn't going to inspire you.
Plays It Safe
Steep
Basic Stemmed
Rotating Cast
Occasional
Acceptable
· Los Angeles · Italian
Osteria La Buca is running one of the more quietly ambitious wine lists in LA — fair prices, genuine Italian depth, and enough natural and obscure producers to keep things interesting across 54 bottles. If you care about what's in your glass and want an Italian restaurant that doesn't treat wine as an afterthought, this is worth your attention.
Deep & Eclectic
Fair
Basic Stemmed
Rotating Cast
Set & Forget
Acceptable
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