Wine Seller Vows Good Taste; Council Swallows It

One-by-one, men wearing expensive Italian shoes and women wearing stylish black dresses pleaded for good taste.

The Santa Monica City Council listened, mostly bemused, and worked out a compromise that will allow these worldly wine aficionados a place of their own on fashionable Montana Avenue.

Perhaps fearing that a little vino could turn patrons into winos who would jeopardize the safety of local school children, Santa Monica City Councilman Robert T. Holbrook asked the council at its meeting last week to reconsider the Planning Commission’s approval for wine-tasting at the Montana Wine Co.

Facing the council, Montana Wine Co. owner Murray Weber amenably offered to limit the time, space and amount of tasting. Plus, he said, the Montana Wine Co. is not a bottoms-up business. He said the company stresses “see it, smell it, sip it, swirl it and spit it.”

The Wine Co. opened more than a year ago to sell fine wines, and now it wants to offer tasting classes and sips for potential buyers. At last week’s council meeting, the company found allies on all sides who said the tasting would add to Santa Monica’s dolce vita.

“Many of our parents shop at Montana Wine Co.,” said a local PTA representative. Councilman Dennis Zane later admitted, “I shop at the store myself, once or twice a week.”

The council voted unanimously for a compromise that will limit wine tasting at the company to after 5 p.m., when schoolchildren in the area are scarce. It will also prohibit tasting on Fridays, when street parking spaces on Montana Avenue are scarce. But Montana Wine Co. officials said they still need approval from the state Alcohol Beverage Control department before the tasting can begin.

Jerry Bass, a resident who first requested that the matter come before the council, insisted that wine tasting at the store could produce drunk drivers in an area that has three schools, a preschool and a church. The Police Department expressed the same concern.

“Mr. Weber may not drink and drive, but others obviously do,” Bass said.

Councilman Kelly Olsen added that the wine company was recently caught serving wine to a minor. Insulted, former Wine Co. employee Robert Royness grabbed the public microphone and announced that he was the one who served the minor, but only because he was an acquaintance of the Santa Monica Police officer who brought the youth in as part of a sting.

Royness said charges against him were dropped with the aid of the city. Then, with a hint of post-war patriotism, he quoted Jefferson: “Good wine is a necessity of life.”

Bass countered, “Notwithstanding Thomas Jefferson, I don’t think wine drinking is a mandate.”

But after Weber accepted the council’s limitations on time and serving size (1 1/2 ounces) and its requirement that the facility be accessible to the disabled, Bass and Holbrook appeared to be in high spirits.