A New Ambition, Uncorked

By Robyn Ross

Miriam Yoo ’05 vividly recalls the moment she placed her first order for natural wine. It was summer 2018 and Flask & Field, her indie wine shop, had just opened in downtown Los Angeles. With her liquor license finally in hand, she could exhale knowing the shelves would soon be filled with bottles of wine alongside Yoo’s curated selection of glassware, candles and chopsticks.

Now in its eighth year, Flask & Field is an established purveyor of natural wine, spirits and elegant kitchenware. It’s a neighborhood fixture brimming with understated California cool, with bottles sporting handwritten labels listing each wine’s name, grape varieties, region and “vibe.” It’s also the product of Yoo’s deliberate quest, undertaken in her 30s, to create her own definition of career success.

Yoo’s family immigrated to the U.S. from Korea when she was a baby, and she grew up in Muskogee, Oklahoma, chosen by her physician father because he dreamed of raising his family in a “small, wholesome American town.” Her parents pushed her toward Rice and a career in law or medicine, and Yoo complied.

After moving to L.A. to study at Southwestern Law School, Yoo worked at a production company, then a talent agency and ultimately the respected firm Ziffren Brittenham, where she served on teams representing talent including Oprah Winfrey, Tyler Perry, LeBron James and Sandra Bullock. But after nine years in the industry, Yoo realized that she was living out her parents’ ambition for her life, not her own.

She began to spend her free time meditating, journaling, and listening to TED Talks and self-help books. “I wanted to give myself space to get to know myself,” she says. She decided that her next job needed to feel meaningful, creative and connected to community. She wanted to spend her days in a beautiful, inspiring space. Developing her big idea for Flask & Field was a rush: “I felt alive — like my cells were excited — and I followed that feeling.”

Once she’d been approved for her small business loan, Yoo and her husband finally told her parents her plan. “What they heard was that I was opening a liquor store,” she remembers. “They were imagining a corner store with bars on the windows.”

But when Flask & Field opened, they understood. Located in the 32-acre ROW DTLA campus, where the husks of century-old industrial buildings have been retrofitted into high-end retail, restaurants and art galleries, the shop boasts 17-foot ceilings and banks of windows that give it an airy feel. Yoo decorated the space with framed art from Etsy and objects sourced at flea markets and estate sales, giving it what she calls a “high-class grandma” aesthetic.

Yoo describes natural wine as focused more on farming and sustainability, less on standardization and predictability. Most of the grapes are hand harvested, and the winemakers eschew chemicals and pesticides. The approach is especially popular with younger customers, she says. “Those 30 and younger do not care about classic regions. They care about labor practices, chemical additives, sulfites and sustainability.”

There are moments when Yoo misses having a predictable paycheck and employer-sponsored health insurance. But “as long as I’m running a business that reflects my values and keeps me creatively stimulated, I’m happy,” she says.

Behind the counter are two signs that read “Be true to yourself” and “And you will never fall.” “They’re a reminder to myself,” Yoo says, “and to everyone else.”

From the Spring 2026 issue of Rice Magazine