Niche Wine Blog

Chateau Marmont

Chateau Marmont (sha-'tO mär-'mOⁿ) adj. 1: discreet 2: discernable 3: modest 4: prudent 5: unobtrusive 6: unpretentious. Rather tame descriptors for a hotel with an iniquitous reputation as a place to misbehave. Marmont, or Chateau M, is known by many as “the castle on the hill,” the Hollywood glamour hotspot that rests in the hills above Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles, California. Inspired by the royal Chateau d’Amboise, a medieval castle with a history all its own residing in the Loire Valley, France, Marmont was built in 1929 originally as apartments, two years later it became a hotel and the rest is history, or is it?

District San Francisco

There are no standards of taste in wine, cigars, poetry, prose, etc. Each man's own taste is the standard, and a majority vote cannot decide for him or in any slightest degree affect the supremacy of his own standard.

- Mark Twain, 1895

This is the philosophy at San Francisco's newest, hippest wine bar, bordering SOMA, South Beach, Mission Bay neighborhoods .  District, which opened last Monday, having a gradual build of customers throughout the week, was climactic Friday night. 

Tapas and Wine

It's been pretty hectic since I recently moved up to the Bay Area San Francisco from Los Angeles.  But now that all has pretty much settled, I have time to scope out The City and the Peninsula.  So far I've found some great restaurants and wine bars as well as some that I haven't fancied so much. 

Last night, Tweed (my fiancé) and I decided to check out a wine bar in downtown Palo Alto, Café Neibaum-Coppola .  It houses the many wines of Francis Coppola wineries as well as other wines and spirits.