Clink Wine Club began in 2020 as a simple way for a small group of friends to stay connected during the pandemic. With restaurants closed and routines disrupted, wine became a shared ritual. What started informally, without a business plan or roadmap, slowly grew into something more intentional.
Since then, Clink has become a quiet fixture in Los Angeles’ natural wine community, best known for their open, monthly wine nights at Love Hour in Koreatown. Their approach is grounded in accessibility rather than gatekeeping, thoughtful selection rather than trends, and a belief that taste develops best when shared.
In our latest feature, we take a closer look at Clink’s origins, their philosophy around wine, and why their outlook aligns so naturally with Nepenthes Los Angeles.
Clink began the way the best things often do, from a small circle of friends. It was 2020, the height of the pandemic, and the four founders, Mike, Jon, Francis, and Don, were looking for a way to stay connected while restaurants and bars were closed. Natural wine, at first a passing curiosity, became a shared ritual and slowly took the place of the tequila and whiskey that used to anchor their gatherings.
In 2021 Clink partnered with Love Hour, the cult Koreatown burger shop. The idea was simple. A wine night that welcomed anyone, forgoing the pretension and gatekeeping sometimes encountered amongst the natural wine scene in Los Angeles. “It was like, if you didn’t know someone, you weren’t really invited,” Mike recalls. Clink pressed in the opposite direction. They made a flyer, opened the doors, and left everything else to chance. Word spread quickly and their monthly nights became a quiet pillar of the city’s underground wine community.
When Nepenthes Los Angeles needed wine for the reception event to launch the Silverlake Market and Josh Brizuela pop-up earlier this year, Clink stepped in and have provided libations for all the store events since. The store recognized in Clink a familiar outlook: careful selection, a respect for craft, and a commitment to sharing what feels right.
As Clink has grown, recently celebrating their fourth anniversary, they remain deliberate about what comes next. The monthly Love Hour nights are still the foundation, but collaborations are handled with care. Mike puts it simply. “It’s not about just stocking what everyone else has,” Mike says. “We want to introduce people to things they wouldn’t find otherwise.”
That approach guides how Clink chooses their bottles. Early on, their selections leaned toward the experimental. High acid. Funky. Boundary pushing. But they soon realized that introducing people to natural wine worked better with a sense of balance.”I’d pick one wine I knew people would love and then something from the same winemaker that they wouldn’t usually grab off the shelf,” Mike explains. It mirrors the quiet guidance of a thoughtful store. Helping someone refine their taste without telling them what it should be.
Clink keeps things intentionally low-key in a moment when everything is branded and scaled for visibility. Their hats, produced in runs of twenty-four as a quiet nod to Kobe Bryant, are not designed as a marketing push. If they would not wear it themselves, they do not make it. When asked about expanding into more prominent commercial partnerships, Mike shrugs. “We’re not chasing anything. We’re just doing what feels right.”
This is why Clink and Nepenthes Los Angeles work together so naturally. Both share an ethos of thoughtful curation. Both trust the strength of the work to speak for itself. And both understand that the right people will always discover what is worth finding.
This shared philosophy is the foundation of the latest project between Clink and Nepenthes Los Angeles. On Saturday, December 13th, the store will host a special event with Clink. To mark the occasion, Nepenthes LA produced a limited run of hoodies made from Engineered Garments blanks and an exclusive series of printed T-shirts featuring. The pieces were created specially for this night. It is a small celebration of the values that brought both groups together. A sense of community built one bottle and one garment at a time.
Photos by @markpeaced