VinoTeca

Equal parts wine shop and wine bar, VinoTeca is the neighborhood spot where the staff literally knows your palate. Owner Katie Rice curates a collection emphasizing small-production, natural, organic, and biodynamic wines from around the world, with a particularly strong Spanish selection. Daily tastings ($15 for three curated wines) rotate weekly starting Thursdays. Sommeliers on staff will pick a wine based on nothing more than your description of what you are in the mood for.

The experience is intimate and educational. They host creative private events like wine-and-junk-food pairing parties. Anything you love by the glass, you can buy a bottle to take home. It is also a retail shop, which means the staff has skin in the game: they want you to find wines you will come back and buy again.

VinoTeca operates in the overlap between wine bar and wine shop, which means the curation is personal and the recommendations are genuine. If you are tired of wine lists built by distributors, this is the antidote.