Any which way, including up

YOU’D think opening a wine bar would be easy. Lay in a collection of interesting wines, lay on some fine cheeses and charcuterie. Don’t forget plenty of crusty bread. Round up a crowd of sociable wine lovers and voila: success.

In Italy, you can find places like this everywhere. And in Spain too. The French tend to get more complicated, restricting the wine to just one appellation -- the wines of Bordeaux or Burgundy or the Rhone. The charcuterie might be embellished with terrines and house-made pates. The cheese might be served as a course, or in an omelet. And the chef might join in with a wine-drenched daube or a simple roast boeuf.

So why do Americans have such a hard time getting it right? I guess it’s because just serving cheese and charcuterie sounds, well, plain. And won’t people want to eat something more substantial? Worried wine bar proprietors beef up their menus, complicating the job for the kitchen further by insisting on small plates or tapas that are less like the little bites than courses that have wandered off from an ambitious tasting menu.

Suddenly that little wine bar someone wanted to open is now a full-fledged restaurant. And it’s not so simple anymore.

The new Vertical Wine Bistro in Pasadena is a case in point. What might have started out in concept as a wine bar has morphed into a wine bistro with more than 20 different wine flights -- trios of 2-ounce tastes -- and a menu of small plates designed to complement the wine. Matching food and wine, though, is more an art than a science, and the idea that any one dish is the perfect mate for any one wine is absurd. Not to mention that the potential number of combinations/matches is dizzying.

Owned by film producer Gale Anne Hurd (“Aliens,” “The Terminator,” “Armageddon”), the 3-month-old Vertical lives up to its name. Located on Raymond Avenue, just across the street from Yujean Kang’s, it’s up a tall flight of stairs on the second floor.

To the left of the door is a big casual bar with chocolate walls and a handful of regulars perched on leather stools, sipping Syrah or Cabernet and watching the basketball game. (The linking of beer and sports is so deeply ingrained in our psyche that those guys daintily sipping wine, trading remarks about the perfume and/or the provenance between pungent comments on the game, elicits a double take.)

Grown-up style

A floor-to-ceiling wall of wines divides the bar from the dining room proper, a handsome, clubby affair with coffered wood ceilings and a fireplace at one end flanked by cozy booths. More of the generously sized booths are lined up along a bank of windows. The look is buttoned up, something that would fit right in with a downtown financial district.

But there’s something so amateurish about the service that it quickly punctures the illusion. Until a few weeks ago, wine consultant Mike Farwell, whom Hurd hired to put together the concept and wine list, would amble over to the table to talk wine.

But he’s no longer there, and the last time I went to Vertical Wine Bistro, the servers were hard-pressed to get the food out, let alone discuss the subtleties of wine choices. It’s not that they’re ignorant about wines, but if the mission of the restaurant is to match food with the wines, it takes more than a rudimentary knowledge of the wine list.

When you sit down, you’re given not one but two wine lists. One is the wines by the bottle; the other is wines by the glass, taste or flight. The latter is so overwrought and confusing you end up dizzy, even before you’ve had a sip. From the 22 flights, you could order one of Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir, say, comprised of 2-ounce tastes of three Pinots for $29. (If tasted separately, they’d be $33, the menu helpfully points out.) So, that’s $29 for 6 ounces of wine, i.e., one glass. For that price, I’d rather drink a glass of something wonderful, or even better, put that $29 toward a terrific bottle of wine.

That’s one of the moderately priced flights in the lineup. The most expensive is a flight of “great” California Cabernets for $79, which does include a taste of 2004 Caymus special select, a wine that’s priced at $290 by the bottle. If you’re the sort of wine buff who revels in pitting one wine against the next, this may be for you. Or for someone curious to taste the wines without committing to a full glass or a bottle. (Somebody should have had the sense to have the flight menu proofread. It’s riddled with embarrassing misspellings, such as “veriety” for “variety,” or “seperately” for “separately,” which works against the sophistication the list seeks to convey.)

The bottle list is strong on California Cabernet and New World Syrah, short on Burgundy and the Rhone. And the reds far outweigh the whites, except for Champagnes, which start at $49 and go all the way up to $1,200 for a Krug Clos du Mesnil.

An eclectic menu

CHEF Sara Levine has put together an odd assemblage of dishes to go with the wines. I loved her food at Opus, where she was, briefly, chef, but wasn’t as enthusiastic about her cooking at her previous post, the Beverly Glen jazz club Vibrato. Here, it’s a mixed bag.

Some things are very tasty -- like the shoestring fries with smoky hot chipotle mayonnaise and house-made ketchup. But as a match for wine, this might be one of the last things I’d pick. I confess to a weakness for her fig poppers, blue cheese-stuffed figs wrapped in crisped Serrano ham and accented with pickled jalapeno. But do they go with wine? Absolutely not. There’s too much going on -- the cheese, the salty ham, the sweet fig, the hot pepper.

And that’s my problem with much of the menu. Mini grilled cheese sandwiches sound as if they’d work, but instead of a classic Gruyere cheese version, these feature walnuts and honey. A salad of fall fruits is garnished with goat cheese and dates. Minted sweet potato fritters could conceivably accompany a stony white wine, but the trio of fritters don’t go with each other. One has chickpeas and Parmigiano-Reggiano, another is made of mushroom risotto stuffed with mozzarella (misspelled as “mozarella”).

Oysters on the half shell arrive with a chile dipping sauce sure to kill any Champagne. Chopped salad embellished with prosciutto (misspelled as “proscuitto”), salami and provolone is dressed in a sharp, wine-unfriendly vinegar dressing.

Levine is capable of turning out beguiling dishes, such as the sweet, meaty jumbo prawns sauteed with capers, pine nuts and raisins (spelled “raisons”). Here the sweet element is a minor accent, and this is a dish that’s terrific with a Viognier or a Sancerre. I could dig into the plate of grilled merguez sausage anytime. The spicy lamb sausage has a wonderful coarse-ground texture and its fire can be ramped up with a little harissa if you like, and then soothed by the rich sweetness of dates. The spice and heat don’t faze a sturdy Syrah or Gigondas, but I can’t see it with some of those cult California Cabs or a fine Burgundy.

Maybe the skirt steak, though, a delicious cut of beef, exactly cooked and served with a dab of mustard, cornichons and yellow wax potatoes. Or the delicious duck confit, which reins in the sweetness fetish and is accompanied by cipollini onions, chestnuts and fennel. Dessert, when we get to it, feels redundant because so many of the dishes we’ve had are sweet. Go for the rustic apple galette, a lovely apple tart with the dough folded over at the edge, served with a dollop of ivory creme fraiche. Perfect. There’s also an intense chocolate cake, more like a Ding Dong made with good quality chocolate and souped up with caramel sauce, chocolate ganache and caramelized bananas. I would like to hear what the sommelier would suggest with that baby. Only, there’s no one to ask.

Plenty of people, though, seem happy trying wines and nibbling on small plates in this uptown setting and for convention-goers it makes a welcome break from banquet food. One night, I look over to see Matt Lauer, Al Roker and Ann Curry from the “Today” show at a big table making merry. If you’re in Pasadena and don’t want a big, formal meal, Vertical Wine Bistro could neatly fill the bill.

And if instead of coming in somewhere between a wine bar and a restaurant, Vertical concentrated more on the wine bar aspect, it could be more than an evening’s stopgap -- it could be a real destination.

virbila@latimes.com

*

Vertical Wine Bistro

Rating: *

Location: 70 N. Raymond Ave., Pasadena, (626) 795-3999; www.verticalwinebistro.com.

Ambience: Clubby wine bistro with bar separated from the dining room by a wall of wine. A fireplace and handful of booths make it cozy for tasting wine and small plates.

Service: Disjointed and out of sync. It feels as if no one is home.

Price: Charcuterie and cheeses, $10 to $17; fritters and fries, $6 to $14; salads, $9 to $12.50; seafood and meats, $13 to $17; mushrooms and vegetables, $7.50 to $12; desserts, $8.

Best dishes: Charcuterie, cheeses, rabbit rillettes, shoestring fries, fig poppers, jumbo prawns, grilled merguez sausage, skirt steak, apple galette.

Wine list: Extensive, heavy on the reds and Champagnes, plus 20 different three-wine flights, with any of those wines available by the 2-ounce taste or 6-ounce glass.

Best table: One of the booths along the wall.

Details: Open from 5 to 11 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday, 4 p.m. to 1 a.m. Friday and Saturday and from 5 to 11 p.m. Sunday. Full bar. Valet parking, $5.

Rating is based on food, service and ambience, with price taken into account in relation to quality. ****: Outstanding on every level. ***: Excellent. **: Very good. *: Good. No star: Poor to satisfactory.