In December of last year, the excellent wine blog, “Opening a Bottle,” likened one of our wines to Shohei Ohtani, the 30-year-old Japanese phenom who has changed the game of baseball and might go down as the greatest player of all time. I’ve thought about this comparison nearly every day since, wondering each time I take a sip of red Burgundy, Barolo, or Côte-Rôtie, “Could this also be considered the Shohei Ohtani of wine?”
     I finally tasted a worthy contender—or set of contenders—last month...

Here in California where I grew up, pizza used to be a tough crust oozing with the cheapest cheese money could buy and a tomato sauce so raunchy it took a dose of macho red wine to wash it down. Cleanse the palate, as we gourmets say today. But the pizza scene has evolved…

Among the two hundred or so producers we work with in France and Italy, perhaps no one has transformed their domaine as comprehensively—and tastefully—in the last fifteen years as brothers Arnaud and David Lavantureux.

Kermit once lamented in Adventures that over the course of the 20th century the “hard-earned knowledge of the ancients [had] been discarded, almost overnight, in the name of progress.” The cost to the wine world was that so much vitality—in both the vineyard and what we poured in our glasses—was being extinguished. Meanwhile, in the Beaujolais, years before meeting Kermit, Jean Foillard and his group of friends were similarly stricken by the same sense of loss. Craving something more real, more lively and honest to drink, they abandoned the “progressive” status quo. ...

On a gloomy afternoon in March of last year, I stood on the Pont du Gard being pelted by cold rain. Moments earlier, a strong gust of the mistral had swept down the Gardon River, snapping in half the €10 umbrella I’d bought from an Avignon Monoprix that morning. My clothes were soaked. I was still working off my jet lag…

Rewind twenty years to the birth of Domaine Costal, a singular collaboration between Chablis’s historic Collet family and Kermit, whose appetite for classic Chablis was—and still is—insatiable. As the story goes, Kermit asked vigneron Gilles Collet to separate a little juice from each harvest, age it the traditional way...

Here is a collection of recent arrivals. Every week, we’ll be adding a dozen or more new arrivals, so check back often for your favorite classics or new discoveries!

When the esteemed French wine artist Michel Tolmer created beautiful artwork for our 50th anniversary, we knew right away that we had to feature it on a few select items of merch. After spending maybe a little too much time researching the options, we landed on a classy, leather-strap cap, a comfortable t-shirt made from 100% cotton, and a tote made with incredibly sturdy, fair-trade, and organic cotton by a certified B corp that invests in the livelihoods of women and farmers of India, featuring three wine sleeves and two other compartments for all of your other needs!

Our five wine clubs feature our best values from France and Italy as well as complex and cellar-worthy wines.