The story of a wine is the story of the people who made it—hard-working, passionate people. When I joined the team at KLWM, I was captivated to hear wine talked about with a focus on the terroir and winemakers rather than on a laundry list of tasting notes including more and more obscure aromas, superficial descriptions, and point(less) scores. After nearly four years of learning and sharing these rich stories secondhand with our customers at our Berkeley shop, I finally decided it was time to travel to France and Italy to meet our winemakers and stand in the vineyards. I wanted to feel the different soils, see the ancient cellars, smell the fermenting newborn wines, taste the grapes right off the vine, and talk with each winemaker to hear their stories and to better understand what makes them tick. This experience taught me more about wine in two weeks than the years I spent studying it.
     Here is a sampler filled with vibrant wines that are best described by the stories that frame them. The wines included in this sampler come from historic domaines dating back to 1259, with the newest founded in 2003. Tales of great frosts, rebellion, war, romance, heartbreak, struggle, and success all come together in the bottle to produce something truly unique. When you pour a glass, you are tasting the work of centuries of people passing down their experience through the grapevine.