Great Escape: Taste Wine—for Charity

Ah, wine tasting. So elegant and sophisticated. Ah, giving back to your community. So wonderful and long-lasting. Yet it's so hard to combine those two activities.

Sipping wine while doing charity work is generally frowned upon. Sorting canned goods, stuffing envelopes, reading to children and the like are hard to do while holding a long-stemmed glass of white wine.

Thankfully, the folks at on Ocean Avenue have figured a way to blend tasting wine and giving back with their “Angel Shares Happy Hour." Every Monday night from 4 p.m. to closing and Tuesday through Friday from 4 to 7 p.m., this chic wine bar donates 15 percent of all tasting sale proceeds to a different nonprofit.

The nonprofits change up every two weeks and range from Santa Monica Baykeeper to the Los Angeles Youth Orchestra. So a wide variety of charities benefit from your sampling Pourtal’s 40-plus wines via high-tech Enomatic machines.

So go ahead: Taste wines from all over the world and give back. Much better than trying to pick up litter on the beach while balancing a full bottle of wine. Not that I know anyone who has ever done that.