Friends Collaborate on Moe’s Fine Wines

Scott Levy hasn’t always been called ‘Moe.’ But he has long dreamed about owning a specialty wine shop. This summer, after more than 20 years of collecting wine from travels to Napa, Italy, Spain, France and Portugal, the Palisadian opened Moe’s Fine Wines in Brentwood. ‘I wanted to live wine’taste it and sell it,’ says Levy, whose nickname ‘Moe’ comes from his college years at Carnegie Mellon University, where he signed his middle initial ‘M’ (for Martin) with a circle instead of a dot. Having earned his bachelor’s degrees in electrical engineering and computer science, with a minor in economics, Levy moved from Pittsburgh to Los Angeles in 1981 and started his own satellite software engineering company, Ada Gurus Incorporated. He ran the business up until a week before opening Moe’s. ‘I negotiated my own contracts for years,’ says the Baltimore native, who combined his strong business experience with his love and knowledge of wine to develop a plan for the store. He also happened to know the perfect architect to design it’his best friend and neighbor Ali Kia, who lives just four doors away on Chattanooga. ‘We have a lot of the same ideas,’ Levy says. He met Kia about 15 years ago when he and his wife, Alma, moved into one of the luxury town homes Kia had designed and built in Redondo Beach. Kia and his wife, Vesta, lived next door, and the couples soon became friends. The Kias moved to the Palisades in 1997, and six years later, when Vesta spotted a house for sale down the street, she immediately called the Levys, who moved here in January 2003. When Levy started searching for a space for his wine shop a year ago, he originally looked at the old Emerson-LeMay dry cleaners location on Swarthmore but was told the landlord wanted a restaurant to go in there. He says he also learned that it can be difficult to get a liquor license in a family-oriented community like the Palisades. Levy signed the lease for his spacious 1,050 sq.-ft. Brentwood shop last October. ‘It’s a good location because it’s on San Vicente with good visibility, restaurants and a lot of foot traffic,’ he says. Located in the plaza at 11740 San Vicente (between Montana and Barrington), Moe’s Fine Wines faces the popular La Scala restaurant. Architecturally, Moe’s was designed to feel like someone’s private cellar’homey but classy, with hard redwood for the wine racks and dark-stain cherry wood cabinets up at the front of the store where Levy greets customers. ‘The idea is to make customers feel welcomed,’ Kia says, explaining how the wine racks at the entrance curve to lead people in, and how the store’s other curved walls and niches are intended to guide people on a stroll through the shop. Riedel wine glasses hang from cabinets with granite inlays, and the limestone porcelain tile floor adds further elegance. ‘Stores like this will always evolve [based on personal taste],’ says Kia, who is originally from Stockholm, where he earned his degree in architecture from the Royal Institute of Technology. Licensed in Sweden, Kia worked for 12 years in the South Bay area and now does mainly custom homes in Beverly Hills and the Westside. Kia also points out that the design allows Levy ‘good control over the store,’ so that he can see what’s going on at the front even if he’s in the reserve room in the back. Kept at 55 degrees, this treasured room holds some of the best, older and more expensive wines, including Groth, Silver Oak, Phelps Insignia and Dominus labels. ‘Part of what I’m selling is my own expertise,’ says Levy, who enjoys sharing the wine knowledge he’s acquired over the years with beginners and connoisseurs alike. When Los Angeles winemaker Ed Valentine recently wandered in and saw that Levy was selling his 2001 Cabernet Sauvignon, Levy was able to show him wines he had never seen before ‘Customers love the look of the store and the wines,’ Levy says. The shop can hold over 6,000 bottles and, eventually, Levy will hold wine tastings at the wet bar area. Levy and Alma, who married in 1992 in Manhattan Beach, invested their own money into starting Moe’s, which carries hundreds of labels from all over the world (many from smaller producers) including unique, vintage and collectible wines, ranging from $8 to $800. ‘I’ve tried almost every wine in the store,’ says Levy, who started seriously tasting in preparation for his store about three months ago. He tasted between 700 to 800 bottles, and recruited Alma as well as the Kias to help him. ‘The best way to learn is by tasting,’ Levy says. ‘The more you taste, the more educated your palette becomes.’ Among his favorites are Silver Oak and Beringer. Kia says he and Vesta enjoyed the blind tasting, in which they would taste a wine without knowing the price or rating, and then e-mail Levy with their own rating of each bottle. ‘Vesta developed a whole different palette just from doing the tasting,’ says Kia, who likes merlots. The two couples also learned that some of the wines they preferred were reasonably priced or fell into the less expensive category, such as the Hayman & Hill 2001 Napa Cabernet, which costs $15. Levy offers a bargain table near the back of the shop with a variety of wines $30 and under. ‘I never want to sell a bad bottle,’ says Levy, who worked several 100-hour weeks while starting his business. ‘This shop was a labor of love.’ In addition to wine, Moe’s Fine Wines also carries champagne, gift baskets, chocolates, stemware and wine accessories. Levy recommends customers try the Stahmanns pecans he carries from a pecan farm in New Mexico. The shop is open Monday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Contact: 826-4444 or visit www.moesfinewines.com.