ready2pour, is a niche ”bar for hire” in Venice, California. We specialize in hand crafted cocktails, aromatics and oenology. We bring an encyclopedia of knowledge, a bank of experience and an unbridled passion for excellence to every engagement.
We are practiced in the arts of imbibing, decanting and infusing as much as friendship. Our clients share our belief in the adage, “there is nothing so noble as serving your fellow man.” If you want to give your clients, guest or patrons something to write home about, we will provide the ink.
Peter M. Birmingham
Sommelier/Beverage Consultant/Writer
Peter Birmingham’s destiny in the world of culinary arts and fine dining was cast while growing up in America’s heartland. Raised and privately schooled in Tulsa, Oklahoma, his parents frequently held parties and barbecues for their many friends, exposing Peter to art, theater, culture and the ways of gracious entertaining. His great uncle, Marion Perry, who mentored him in the skills of fishing, hunting and sourcing food, gave Peter his first lessons in the appreciation of fine wine. To this day, Peter remembers the nuances of his first tasting; a 1966 Dr. Thanish “Bernkastler Doctor” Spatlese Riesling, a wine of “vivid fruits, co-mingled with the odd but stimulating bouquet of gasoline, racy acidity and gentle sweetness.” At age twelve, Peter was already immersed in the exploration of world cuisines through the classes taught by his neighbor, a recent graduate from the Cordon Bleu School in Paris.
With this formative background in the tastes and cultures of food and wine, Peter worked after school in the local restaurants bussing tables, washing dishes and learning the basics of restaurant operations. In concert with this entry level work, Peter followed the educational principle of learning by doing, while simultaneously unleashing his bon vivant inclinations hosting his own dinner parties for prep school friends.
Peter’s first professional position in hospitality was with Sheraton Hotels in Tulsa 1981. Beginning as the Ambrosia restaurant’s dining room captain, he received successive promotions for the next three years until he reached the position of General Manager. Then, with encouragement and means provided by Uncle Marion, Peter embarked on an intensive twelve country tour of Europe, after which he received a formal wine education at L’Academie du Vin in Paris in 1984. Upon his return, he became a protégé of Jim Arsenault, the nationally respected wine professional in Washington, D.C., known for his teaching and encyclopedic knowledge of wine. Through Arsenault’s recommendation, Peter was offered the position of Beverage Director for Capital Management and Development Corporation (now Capital Restaurant Concepts Ltd.), the premier restaurant group in Washington D.C., in 1985.
His arrival in California came at the invitation to work a harvest at Lambert Ridge Winery in Sonoma’s Dry Creek Valley, in what he refers to as the 1989 “Harvest from Hell.” “This experience” says Peter, “convinced me that people were a lot more forgiving than Mother Nature and the restaurant business was for me”.
Peter firmly established himself in the Northern California restaurant business when he became an Operating Partner at Bistro Lunel in Sonoma in 1992. By the time he landed at the acclaimed Elisabeth Daniel in San Francisco in 2000, he’d gained the expertise and diversity provided by positions as Beverage Director/General Manager at Southside Saloon and Dining Hall in Healdsburg and Beverage Director and Assistant General Manager at Nice Ventures/Rose Pistola in San Francisco.
When Norman Van Aken was searching for a sommelier for his new Los Angeles restaurant, he asked his friend, Master Sommelier Larry Stone, about the man he remembered taking care of him at Elisabeth Daniel. Stone knew that Peter was available and enthusiastically recommended him for the position. Peter joined the opening management team of Norman’s on Sunset in 2003 and is now the Managing Director as well as Sommelier. In addition to his management duties, he is responsible for creating an imaginative beverage program of spirits, wines and after dinner beverages that complement the bold and unique flavors of Van Aken’s New World Cuisine. In creating Norman’s lists, Peter focused on variety and pricing, and aimed to stimulate the novice without insulting the connoisseur. “We strive to honor the food with balanced wines that are unique, original and pure; wines that speak of the places that produced them,” says Peter. “The Bar and Beer collection blends the collaboration of the kitchen’s freshest fruits and vegetables with leading the hospitality industries bar trends.”
After Norman’s on Sunset sold its business interests in Southern California, Peter took an opportunity to assist other businesses in reaching their potential by consulting in his field of experience. Inspired by Carl Bruggemieir’s CZH Hospitality Consulting, he was hired as their full-time consulting Beverage consultant (www.czhhospitality.com) where he created the Bistro B wine list for the Renaissance Hotel Group. Birmingham found new clients with Il Grano (re-imaging of the restaurant in a makeover and was offered to continue as the consulting wine director/sommelier). He also has created the wine list for Hadaka Sushi and most recently the Library Bar cocktail list (mixology). Birmingham was recruited to Maui to complete the transfer of ownership for Ali Biglar (Wine Expo) of his newest retail store the Hawaii Liquor Superstore. Peter is currently on the mainland consulting Stephen Abronson’s Pourtal Wine Tasting Bar in Santa Monica.
In addition to L’Academie du Vin, Peter has completed further wine education at the World Chardonnay Symposium Sonoma-Cutrer, Carneros Quality Alliance-sponsored “Camp Carneros,” and VinItaly 1998. He has been a contributing food and wine writer for Eating magazine and was contributor to the Rose Pistola cookbook.
Peter has received numerous awards and recognition for his wine programs since the beginning of his professional career in California. They include:
Best Sonoma County Restaurant Beverage Program award to the Southside Saloon and Dining Hall in Healdsburg, CA, in 1994 and 1995 form the Sonoma County State Fair;
The Best Sommelier’s I Know by Matt Kramer in Wine Spectator 1997 and 1999;
Top Ten San Francisco Wine Destination Restaurants by Harvey Steiman in Wine Spectator 2003;
Bay Area Top 100 Restaurants-Exceptional Wine Program by Michael Bauer in the San Francisco Chronicle, 2000, 2001, 2002 and 2003, all for Elisabeth Daniel.
His wine program at Norman’s on Sunset was named Best New Restaurant Wine List 2005 by Food & Wine magazine, July 2005.
He has been titled Best Sommelier in Los Angeles’s by Brad Johnson, Angelino Magazine, December, 2005, and was acclaimed One of the Top Five Sommelier’s in Los Angeles, Editor’s Pick Los Angeles Magazine, 2006.
Most recently, he has consulted for Pourtal Wine Tasting Bar to recognition as “One of the Ten Best Wine Bars” in Los Angeles by the LA Weekly, August, 2009 and Gayot.com, July, 2009.
His work has been given distinction in the Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Times Magazine, West Magazine, Wine Spectator and the L.A. Weekly.
Peter enjoys the bounty of southern California secrets of that can be experienced anywhere from Arcadia to Zuma Beach, and he is currently doing a personal tour of the city’s best taqueterias. He lives in Venice Beach on the edge of Santa Monica.
Steven Eric Fowler, poet, conversation curator, journeyman bartender and recovering yogaphobe.
i was conceived in an earthquake off bainbridge island in the company of sea lions, captain pete and bald eagles.
i was born a hundred years, a few days and blocks from the same town square where wild bill hickok killed davis k tutt, jr.. apparently, gambling and guns do not mix.
i was raised in the scrub brushes of mesquite and flat plains of dallas, texas. i can still smell my baseball mitt and the black earth of my childhood. i miss my stolen mongoose which accompanied me on countless expeditions through the undeveloped farms scattered like freckles on a sun scorched face.
poetry found me in a public school classroom at an early age. i was listening to a classmate read from euripides, “medea”. as her husband’s betrayal became evident, i watched a fly land on the teacher’s fly swatter.
in awe, i wrote the first lines of ignorance and irreverence. the first utterences were as meaningless as television, but i still like to read them, especially to children. i find little people judge less than their taller counterparts.
i owe as much to that fly as i do to so many dead writers. i carry baudelaire’s letters with me as a reminder of how blessed my life is. his accounts of burning furniture to stay warm during the parisian winters, the pursuit of his debtors and the state banning of his words are for me inspirations and warnings of the magnitude of what is at stake.
i hold neruda’s, memoirs, in the same regard a jesuit might the bible. there are so many dead writers i love. in simplest terms, it is for them i write. i imagine them looking down, drinks in hands, saying, “street, tell us something we don’t know.”
poetry is bread, let’s feed the world.
cocktails make people beautiful, let’s paint some lips.
