The Fizz #78: Nicole Dougherty, co-owner of Tabula Rasa, sees events as critical to a post-COVID small business strategy

I spoke to Nicole Dougherty of Tabula Rasa on mentorship, how the business landscape has changed post-pandemic, and how she puts her trust in wine reps

For this mini-Fizz issue, hop into a conversation with Tabula Rasa co-owner Nicole Dougherty. Nicole’s Los Angeles based Tabular Rasa Bar and Tabula Rasa Shop are California gems, stocking a wonderful mix of wines, vermouths, sakes, and non-alcoholic beverages. Nicole’s focus on hospitality and translating wine to the consumer is evident by the loyal following her bar has brought in over their last seven years in business.

In this issue, we speak to the need for small businesses to use events to continue to stay relevant in a post-COVID world, what makes a good wine rep, and how mentorship has played into her life as a wine professional.

Nicole Dougherty, photo from Instagram

Margot: I'd love to learn a little bit about your upbringing. Did you grow up in wine?

Nicole Dougherty: No, I got into wine as sort of an aside. I spent a few years teaching in Baltimore at a public alternative education school. We don't pay our teachers a livable wage, so I started working in a restaurant as supplemental income and totally fell in love with wine. I started studying on my own and eventually decided I wanted to take it a step further and move out to California to be closer to a wine and food hub. That was about ten years ago. Since then, my focus has always been hospitality. I spent a few years working in importing and distributing. I worked for Neal Rosenthal, which was an incredible opportunity to learn. A lot of the first natural wines that came to the U.S. from Europe were brought in by Neal, and in the 70s—he really was avant-garde in that way. Then I landed where I am at Tabula Rasa, which is my whole heart and soul.

Margot: How did it start with Tabula Rasa?

Nicole: My business partner Zach Negin founded Tabula Rasa in 2016. I came on in 2018 initially, just one day a week as a beverage consultant, and then as GM, and then as partner. Zach and I opened our second location, which is called Tabula Rasa Shop in a neighborhood called North Hollywood about fifteen minutes away from our wine bar in the fall of 2022. We had our first birthday party recently which was a ton of fun.

I’m really grateful to everyone that I've crossed paths with and that has mentored me and that I've learned from along the way. I'm at a point in my career now where I'm hoping to be able to communicate all the lessons and the storytelling and information that I've been lucky enough to learn. I want to present that in a way that's digestible and fun to a younger class of both wine professionals and just people who want to hang out at the bar or the shop and want to learn about wine.

Margot: As you look back over your career, what were some of those founding moments of mentorship or knowledge that you experienced?

Nicole: My mentors in when I first moved to San Francisco were a hospitality group called Hi Neighbor. They were foundational in breaking down everything I knew about hospitality and breaking down everything that I thought that I knew about wine and ego and presenting it in a way that was loving and amicable. That really was inspiring me to be the best version of myself, to have a little bit of a competitive edge, but also to do so with with grace. Working with my business partner now, Zach has been so inspiring. He thinks so differently than I do. He's an engineer. I'm a creative. We both have a little bit of both, but the way that he asks questions about wine has changed the way that I respond to and give information.

Even to me as a wine professional, hearing about barrel usage isn't completely thrilling—so I can only imagine what it’s like to someone who's just sitting at the bar. It's maybe not the most exciting part. He taught me to be a translator of information that I receive from our reps or the winemakers themselves, and how to present that in a way that's invigorating to whomever is on the receiving end. That's triumphing the winemakers and their processes and all the important things that have gotten the grapes into the bottle and then the bottle into the glass.

Tabula Rasa shop, photo from Instagram

Margot: And how do you do that? How do you translate to the consumer?

Nicole: There's a conversation that's been happening over the last few years, which I think is really important around creating an environment that nurtures consumers, that excites consumers, that doesn't repel consumers. When you’re at the bar, you can see the way that we operate is really with an open mind and open platform. There's something different that's happening there all the time, whether it's live jazz, a smoked oyster pop up, a winemaker event, we’re trying to involve people from all levels of the culinary and hospitality world. It's really cool for someone who just sees us as their neighborhood bar to be able to meet the winemaker that makes their favorite glass.

We have 20 wines by the glass and at the shop, we have wines open for tasting always. So even if you're pouring someone just a tiny little splash, it's a small digestible format to start the conversation and to keep them engaged.

Margot: You mentioned your smoked oyster pop up. Friends of mine who own bars and shops have really communicated this pattern where in order to be a successful business nowadays, they can't just be a bar. They can't just be a wine shop. They have to be an event space. They have to hold classes. They have to have dance parties. They have to have poetry readings. Do you think that is a mainstay of having a sustainable business nowadays?

Nicole: It's something that we've always done, but post pandemic—yes. I think that shift is here. Particularly in Los Angeles and I'm sure this is the case in other parts of the country. The sustainability of small businesses—it's tough. We've got everything working against us. I think it’s a shift away from a small business as a unit and starting to think more of a collaborative effort as the way of the future. You're pooling resources, you're pooling creativity, you're pooling labor to create something together. My friend Gia, who did our smoked oyster pop up, we paired the oysters with smoky wines from Tabula Rasa. There’s a meshing together of creative outlets that happens.

We do have poetry once a month, actually. Working as a collective rather than as an individual entity is not only good for survival, but for community. People are bombarded on the internet daily with events and this is what's happening and it's just so much information. In order to stay current, it is important. It’s also a way that I personally like to work.

Margot: I'm curious about your vision for the bar and the shop in terms of the wines you bring in. When you're sourcing wines for the shop, what do you look for? What makes sense?

Nicole: With retail, the label is important. Fortunately or unfortunately, however you want to look at it, the visual component of the bottle is more important than it is if you're in a restaurant or a bar setting. Just like the way that you can use fashion to express yourself, the label can shape the way that you are perceived to the world, to a customer who knows nothing about you. There are more considerations for the shop visually.

I really look a lot to my wine reps and to trusting them. We've been open for seven years and we have a really strong core group of reps, winemakers that come every single year for a RAW wine festival and they're at the bar every single year. We hold so many events, and our reps are involved in so many events. As a buyer, they bring me only wines that make sense for our program.

Margot: What kinds of wines make sense for Tabula Rasa?

Nicole: We've always focused as much as we can on the big umbrella term, which no one likes the word, but natural wine. We always focus on women, non binary, people of color, places that are underrepresented in the traditional wine world.

I came from a pretty classical wine education. I went through the Court [of Master Sommeliers] which is not something I am particularly fond of these days, but I went through the steps and learned about Burgundy and Bordeaux. And that's all great, and I'm glad I had that base, but it's not what is exciting or applicable to the wine world now. The folks that we're selling to are a really interesting, creative, and unique people who are in their 20s and 30s and sometimes upwards of that too, but they don't want to spend a hundred dollars on a bottle of Bordeaux. They want something that's made by someone who's young and experimenting with a native variety or maybe a hybrid or something more unique. We try to be proponents of wines that you don't learn about when you're studying the wine regions of the world.

Margot: It's great to hear that you have a really good relationship with your reps. What does a great rep look like for you? What do they do that's exceptional or that makes you feel like they're really listening?

Nicole: It's the way they show up and the way they're willing and wanting to help. If they come to me and say hey I want to do some staff education or they're pouring behind the bar, or they're doing an in shop event. Again, that collaborative effort. Them giving me all of the tech info is helpful for me, but is that actually helpful for someone who's walking through the shop doors? No, but them being there in person and telling the story of the winemaker really is.

Margot: You've been at your first location for seven years, which in small business years is a fairly long time. I'm curious to hear about how you've seen the taste profile or maybe the culture around wine in your area change over that time?

Nicole: It’s been really exciting to watch peoples’ minds open, to watch their palates develop, to watch a shift happen culturally to where the consumer is a little bit more informed on what a pet-nat is, what a skin contact wine is. They're coming in and asking for those things and they have a little bit stronger vocabulary in expressing what their wants and needs are. I think that they're looking to push their own boundaries too. I don't see as much as I used to in our little corner of the wine world the notion of feeling scared to break out of their box. It seems like they're coming to us as a tabula rasa, as a blank slate. That has been a really fun ride to be a part of.

Haley Sternin pouring for a wine calss at Tabula Rasa Bar, photo from Instagram

Margot: I'm curious to hear about the challenges you've encountered as Tabula Rasa, both locations, have grown. As a small business, what are the difficulties you’ve overcome or are currently processing?

Nicole: As probably many wine professionals can relate to, if I could spend all day just thinking about wine and tasting wine and educating staff, that could be a great full time job. As a small business owner, and anyone who has to look at labor percentages and the mechanics of staffing, that job seems to be rarer and rarer. I know we've watched the traditional sommelier role, even in larger restaurants, diverge into something that's more of managerial duties and serving duties and such.

There's a million different things looming over me every day that all need to be taken care of. Looking at payroll, managing, fixing the broken toilet, there's a million different things asking for my attention at once. I think my biggest challenge is just not being able to spend as much time with wine as ideally I would like. That goes back to the trust in my reps—knowing that, hey, we've got 30 minutes to taste, trusting that they are bringing me things that they believe in and that will work for for our program, not just what their bosses are telling them to sell.

Margot: Do you ever get to carve out time for continuing your own wine education?

Nicole: Yeah, I think it’s very important to do and me and my beverage manager, Haley Sternin, we make sure that a week never goes by without us actively tasting. We're lucky to live in California where we have access to a lot of great wine regions, whether it be Santa Rita Hills up to Sonoma or Napa. We're also really interested in areas like the Sierra Foothills, Sacramento, areas where people who have been pushed out of the really expensive parts of California are able to do things with a little bit more creativity and working with non traditional grapes. Traveling and tasting is paramount because the last thing we would ever want to do is get stuck or fall behind.

Margot: How many people do you have on your staff?

Nicole: We have about 20 folks that work at the bar. We have a talented general manager, we have bartenders, a kitchen manager and a few back of house staff. At the shop we run pretty lean. We've got a talented group of folks who have really taught me a lot in terms of retail. A few of them come from a coffee background, which is a fascinating overlap in the beverage world, I love talking to them as buyers. I love hearing their tasting notes. I love speaking about soils in the parts of the world that coffee comes from versus wine. They've been very helpful with visual merchandising as well, which has been a fun project that we've taken on.

In May of 2020, we shut down Tabula Rasa Bar, but we turned it into a retail shop, which was us using kitchen tape and a sharpie and sticking that on all the bottles and putting them in the front window. Zach and I hand delivered wine all over Los Angeles, which is what led us to say, hey, we kind of like retail. That's how Tabula Rasa shop eventually was born.

Margot: Very cool. I love that you found something inspiring in a difficult moment. As you think about the future of your business, what's the vision?

Nicole: The vision is to maintain and grow both businesses. I'm lucky that I have great leadership within both outlets, which allows me to do more offsite activities—to lead workshops, for example. Of course, expansion is always on our minds. My business partner is great at finding very special real estate deals. We're always looking at that.

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Check out Tabula Rasa Bar and Tabula Rasa Shop next time you’re in Los Angeles, and keep up with Nicole on Instagram.