Old World obsession hiding in plain sight
Main Street · Columbia · Wine bar with European-inspired small plates · Visit Website ↗
Reviewed July 2, 2026
Wingman Metrics
The name says wine parlour and they mean it — walking into Lula Drake feels like stepping into a candlelit European cave where someone actually cares what's in the bottle. The list skews hard Old World, heavy on France, Italy, Spain, and Austria, with natural and low-intervention wines woven throughout rather than siloed into a gimmick section. This is not a steakhouse wine list dressed up in ambiance; this one has a genuine point of view.
Eighty to 120 labels sounds manageable until you start reading and realize how much ground they cover: grower Champagne from small estates, Loire Chenin Blanc and Cab Franc from boutique producers, Nebbiolo from Piedmont's smaller houses, Austrian Grüner Veltliner and Blaufränkisch, organic Rhône and Languedoc reds, Txakolina from the Basque Country, and occasional orange wine drops from Georgia and Italy. The regional depth is real — this isn't a list padded with Napa Cab and New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc to keep the nervous drinker comfortable. Gaps are minimal, though adventurous New World options are largely absent, which is clearly a deliberate editorial choice rather than an oversight. If your drinking lives mostly in Europe, you will find more to explore here than you can reasonably tackle in one visit.
Roughly 15 to 20 pours available at any given time is an unusually generous glass program for a room this size, and the selections rotate seasonally rather than sitting static for a year. At $10 to $18 a glass, you're not getting a deal exactly, but you're getting access to wines that most Columbia restaurants simply don't stock — Txakolina by the glass alone is a small miracle in this market.
Loire Valley Chenin Blanc (sec, small producer) — $48
Sec Loire Chenin is one of the most food-flexible, age-worthy whites in the world, and you rarely find small-producer examples on restaurant lists outside major wine cities. At $48, the markup is steeper than we'd like, but you're drinking something that drinks well above its retail weight and would cost you considerably more at a comparable spot in Atlanta or Charleston.
Austrian Blaufränkisch
Most tables walk past this to grab Burgundy or Barolo, which is exactly why you shouldn't. Blaufränkisch is a dark, peppery, high-acid red that punches well above its price point and has almost no restaurant footprint in South Carolina — finding it here is genuinely unusual, and the crowd-averse ordering means your server might actually have time to tell you something interesting about it.
Grower Champagne NV (small estate Brut)
We love grower Champagne as a concept, and we love that Lula Drake stocks it. But at $90 a bottle on a list where retail is around $45, the 100% markup is the steepest dollar-for-dollar pain point on the list. Order it by the glass if it's available that night and let someone else absorb the bottle math.
Txakolina (Basque white, Ameztoi Rubentis NV) + Charcuterie and cheese board
Txakolina is bone dry, bracingly acidic, and has a faint spritz that cuts through fatty cured meats and washed-rind cheeses like a knife. The salinity in the wine mirrors the salt in good charcuterie and keeps the whole thing feeling light even when the board is loaded. It's the right call at the start of the meal and sets the table for everything that follows.
🔥 The Bottom Line
Lula Drake is doing something genuinely rare for Columbia — a thoughtful, Old World-anchored wine program with real depth, rotating selections, and staff who can actually talk about what's in the glass. The markups run steep across the board, which keeps it from being perfect, but if you want to drink interestingly in South Carolina, this is the room.
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Steep
Basic Stemmed
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Crowd Pleasers
Steep
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Crowd Pleasers
Steep
Basic Stemmed
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Crowd Pleasers
Steep
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Fair
Basic Stemmed
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Crowd Pleasers
Fair
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Set & Forget
Acceptable
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