Silverlake Wine face-lift

The action at Silverlake Wine has been on a three-day hiatus while the store gets a long-planned face-lift; it will reopen Thursday. I stopped by yesterday and found co-owner George Cossette rushing to finish the work. Expanding to 2,000 square feet, Cossette says, will allow him to enlarge his portfolio of wines by a third and begin offering a broad range of spirits, including single malt Scotches, small-batch bourbons, aperitifs and digestifs. But initially, it'll just be the American and French wine selections that will be expanded. “They are our bestsellers,” Cossette says. “We’ll be able to have more depth, a broader selection of all of the major regions of France, particularly in the $55-to-$75 range, a midrange of wines that we didn’t have room to handle before.”

The best news for the regulars at Silverlake’s Sunday wine tastings is the expanded tasting bar. It now stretches down the side of the store, three times the length it was before and long enough to handle a crowd. When Cossette and partners Randy Clement and April Langford host their first tasting in the remodeled store this Thursday (5 to 9 p.m.), the shelves won’t be completely stocked and the paint may still be wet. Still, they are eager to toast a future with more elbowroom … and more wines.

Silverlake Wine, 2395 Glendale Blvd., Los Angeles, (323) 662-9024.

-- Corie Brown

Photo by Corie Brown