Happy first day of Spring! With longer days and warmer weather around the corner, this is a great time to dig into wines that celebrate this coming season of growth and exploration.
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K&L is thrilled to welcome the distinguished wine legend, Jancis Robinson, MW OBE, for a once-in-a-lifetime event series in San Francisco in March 2024.
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On Wednesday evening, K&L San Francisco welcomed a dynamic, female-led team for a celebration of one of the most revered pairings: caviar and Champagne. A group of 15 guests joined the K&L team to delve into the complexities of flavor, texture, and terroir inherent in both Champagne and caviar.
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Last week, we held a Team Halloween candy and wine pairing contest for staffers in our San Francisco location. It was scary, it was fun, it was a little gross, but we all survived to tell the tale!
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One of the truly great things we accomplished at K&L this year was bringing our wine, spirits, and beer delivery service in-house. Rather than relying on external vendors to deliver orders to our local customers, we hired a first-rate team of drivers to our staff and built a system that provides real-time tracking and SMS notifications. We are so pleased with the improved service we can offer—all at little to no cost—and hope you are too.
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All in all, 2021 is potentially an exceptional vintage; its only downside is limited availability due to low yields and the giant void left in the market from many wineries deciding not to produce any red wines in 2020. It's still fairly early days in the 2021 release cycle, but the wines that have already hit the market are showing this is potentially a vintage for the ages.
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WeatherEye Vineyard, on the ridgeline of Red Mountain in Washington, is without doubt one of the most exciting vineyards anywhere in the United States: a site so radical, its implementation has been 15 years in the making! The incredibly rocky, volcanic soils, constant wind, elevation, and lengthy growing season give the wines immense concentration and structure. Even though the vines are relatively young, the intensity of the wines here is already formidable.
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One of the favorite things about my job is seeking out small producers making interesting wines. I love working with people who are really just beginning on their journey and climbing on board with them to see where it goes. I first met Cody and Emily Rasmussen of Desire Lines Wines back in May of 2019 at a very memorable “Shades of Shake Ridge” event in the Sierra Foothills. … There is something so authentic and genuine about them as people and that in turn is encapsulated in their wines. The wines embody a true passion and love for the craft of making wines with a palpable sense of place. They are soulful wines of minimal intervention, yet are also precise and refined. Every part of the process from the selection of vineyard sites, meticulous farming, astute subtle winemaking, hand-drawn label art… everything is done with the utmost care and deliberate attention to detail.
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I have long believed that the Santa Cruz Mountains are a truly special place to grow grapes. This rugged coastal range forced up by the collision of two tectonic plates has an incredible bounty of complex soils. It’s a geological kaleidoscope of ancient uplifted seabed, volcanic deposits, and metamorphic rock bent and twisted by the immense pressures below. All of this is churned up by the San Andreas fault and weathered down by several millennia of coastal storms.
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To someone outside of California, saying “North of the San Francisco Bay” would indicate a large territory, including the lumping of Sonoma and Napa Counties together. Being just a quick 30-minute drive apart from each other means that many out-of-town visitors make plans to hit both areas in one go, especially for wine tasting expeditions. Yet, separated by the Mayacamas Mountain Range, these two wine-driven counties are, surprisingly, incredibly different from one another—in personality, in terroir, and ultimately in the wines that they produce. A few weeks ago, the Key Accounts team had an opportunity to spend a day in Sonoma and surrounding areas, and a day in Napa, side by side.
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K&L Spain/Portugal Buyer Kirk Walker checks in on some of our longtime favorite wine producers and introduces us to a new-to-our-shelves importer who’s shaking things up in the European import world.
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Mary Taylor is an innovative producer/importer who’s taking a fresh approach to the wine business. Not unlike the wines that Kermit Lynch imports, Mary Taylor’s wines are small-production and regional; the big difference, however, is that the brand on the label is the importer, not the producer. If you are seeking well made, regionally specific wines, fear not—these are the wines you’re looking for! Once you have tried a bottle with the name Mary Taylor on it, you’re sure to try another.
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