Six Decades of KLWM
12-Bottle Sampler
by Tom Wolf
How many fashion or musical trends have emerged since 1972, the year Kermit opened his shop? There have surely been as many in fine wine. But, having a strong sense of what he likes—and how he likes it made—Kermit has never followed the latest fashion. Who, for example, was knocking down the doors for Chinon rosé or high-quality Aligoté in the 1970s? Old-vine Corbières and Custoza weren’t exactly on everyone’s lips in the ’80s. By the ’90s, excellent Chablis—like the Savary family’s—had arrived, but low-intervention Morgon like Guy Breton’s? Nope. In the 2000s, Kermit was thrilled to introduce readers to Porro’s Dolcetto and Gallety’s classy, off-the-beaten-path Côtes du Vivarais. In the last two decades, we have tracked down an outstanding, value-driven sparkling wine from Seyssel in Savoie, a beautiful Calabrese from a rising talent in Sicily, a classic Crozes-Hermitage from an old partner in the northern Rhône, and a crisp and distinctive white wine from the southern Italian region of Puglia. Our standard now, as in 1972, is Kermit’s love of singular and delicious terroir-driven wines from France and Italy.
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