Los Angeles-based LearnAboutWine.com is expanding its collector-dinner programming with five ticketed events running September 2026 through February 2027, each built around rare-vintage flights served blind to groups of 8 to 14 guests at some of the city's most recognized fine-dining addresses. The series represents a deliberate format bet: keep guest counts small, anchor each evening to a provenance story, and place the wines inside venues capable of matching the ambition on the plate.
Sommelier Director Ian Blackburn, who has led wine education programming since founding the platform in 1995, is positioning the dinners explicitly as collector experiences rather than educational events. The distinction matters for operators watching where ultra-premium F&B spending is going: guests at these evenings are not paying for instruction — they are paying for access, curation, and a room where every other person at the table understands what is in the glass.
The Lineup and Venues
The five dinners span Bordeaux, Burgundy, California cult wines, Rhône-adjacent California bottles, and Spanish fine wine. The September 10 Pétrus vs. First Growths dinner at 71Above — the 71st-floor room above Downtown Los Angeles — presents a 2000 horizontal of First Growths alongside two library vintages of Pétrus (1983 and 1975), all poured blind. The September 24 Cult Wine Dinner moves to Belvedere Restaurant at The Peninsula Beverly Hills, capped at eight guests and nine wines from Harlan Estate, Screaming Eagle, and Scarecrow. The October 8 Great Burgundy Dinner returns to 71Above with all 10 Domaine de la Romanée-Conti expressions across 9 Grand Crus and 1 Premier Cru — wines with an estimated combined retail value of $70,000 — limited to 14 guests. The December 3 Sine Qua Non and Friends dinner takes place at Providence, one of two three-Michelin-Star restaurants in Los Angeles, led by Executive Chef and proprietor Michael Cimarusti, the 2019 James Beard Award winner for Best Chef: West; that evening is capped at eight guests across eight courses paired with at least eight wines. The February 25 Vega Sicilia dinner, back at 71Above, adds a direct-purchase element: guests can acquire estate wines during the meal, with Vega Sicilia's Worldwide Ambassador Dennis Fassett present.
What This Signals for Operators
The format LearnAboutWine.com is scaling — intimate, provenance-driven, venue-anchored — is a useful benchmark for hotel F&B directors, private dining managers, and wine program leads evaluating their own event revenue lines. The blind-tasting structure is not incidental; it removes the hierarchy of label recognition from the room and focuses attention on the wine itself, which tends to deepen engagement and justify premium ticket prices. The choice to rotate across 71Above, The Peninsula Beverly Hills, and Providence also reflects a deliberate venue-partnership strategy: each room brings its own audience and credibility, reducing the marketing lift required to fill eight to fourteen seats at a high price point.
For suppliers and importers, the series is worth tracking as a distribution-adjacent channel. The Vega Sicilia evening's direct-purchase component is a clean example of how collector dinners can function as a soft-sell environment for estate wines — a model that regional importers and DTC-focused producers are increasingly exploring as on-premise volume stays compressed in the ultra-premium tier.
Operators running private dining programs at luxury hotels or independent fine-dining restaurants should note that the guest-count ceiling here is a feature, not a limitation. Scarcity of seats is itself part of the value proposition, and it aligns the cost structure of rare-wine service with a room size where stem counts and decanting logistics are actually manageable. For more on how fine-dining venues are structuring high-margin event nights, see our coverage in Operator Intelligence and Brand Launch Department.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
