WSLA: Spago - Wine & Spirits Magazine

WSLA: Spago


Beverly Hill’s Spago is a benchmark food and wine destination within Los Angeles County. (Photo courtesy of the restaurant)

Among LA restaurants, Spago is a grande dame, perhaps the grande dame, a benchmark food and wine destination. The grandeur of Chef Ari Rosenson’s menu is often deferred: he’s judicious in calling out his network of farms and producers, whether Girl & Dug Farms for greens, Finley Farms for broccolini, duck from Liberty Farms or veal chops from Marcho Farms.

The wine program, meanwhile, is not only one of the largest in town, it’s also one of the city’s most historic, reflecting a sommelier lineage that extends back to some of the industry’s most esteemed veterans, including Michael Bonaccorsi, Kevin O’Connor, Chris Miller, Philip Dunn, Rina Bussell and Cristie Norman. The property is between wine directors at present—Dunn moved up the street to Wally’s last year—but Omar Lima and Eric Denq are holding down the fort under the watchful eye of General Manager Steve Scott Springer, overseeing an inventory that routinely hovers around 3,000 selections, on a list that’s as deep in Austrian riesling as it is in Napa Valley cabernet, and with a selection of white Burgundy that would make a starlet blush. 

Spago is part of our Top 30 LA List of 2023. Read the whole story here.


176 N Canon Drive, Beverly Hills, CA 90210

(310)385-0880

Patrick J. Comiskey covers US wines for Wine & Spirits magazine, focusing on the Pacific Northwest, California’s Central Coast and New York’s Finger Lakes.


This story appears in the print issue of Spring 2023.
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