Santenay's Château de la Charrière Overperforms Year After Year

There may not be a better producer we import from Burgundy when it comes to quality-to-price-ratio than Château de la Charrière. Great vintage, good vintage, bad vintage—it doesn’t matter. These guys just continue to churn out great value after great value from the humble Santenay appellation. Benoît Girardin took over the winemaking reins at his family property over 10 years ago and hasn’t looked back. He’s skillfully crafting excellent values that deftly combine a classic Burgundian rusticity with modern winemaking techniques. The wines always have beautifully defined fruit characteristics while simultaneously being unmistakably Burgundian.

Burgundy’s 2022 Vintage: Hitting on All Cylinders

The Burgundies are landing fast and furiously at K&L with a bevy of amazing values from the fantastic 2022 vintage! With pricing finally stabilized and a good-sized crop contributing to robust supply, now is the time to load up on the bargains in stock. We just had several containers land with many of our most popular direct import producers like Domaine Jean Michel Giboulot, Domaine de la Charrière, Domaine Renaud, Château de la Maltroye, Domaine Bart, and Domaine Pernot-Belicard. What separates 2022 from the last few vintages is the consistency in the quality of both the whites and reds—these wines are EXCELLENT! They are beautiful and fruit-forward with excellent balance, great acidity, and fine tannins. These wines will be enjoyable in their youth as well as worthy of your cellar.

Bordeaux Buying Guide: A Fond Farewell and Best-in-Class Selections

Generations of wine lovers, K&L employees, and folks all around Bordeaux are better for having Clyde in their lives. Having this kind of impact on the world around us is rare—something we all aspire to, but few can accomplish. As we bid farewell to Clyde, we celebrate not just his achievements but the lasting legacy of friendship and passion he leaves behind. Read more from Clyde here, and join us in raising a glass to one of the legends of Bordeaux.

A Tribute to Clyde Beffa

I can safely assume that I speak for everyone at K&L when I say that there’s no proper tribute to encapsulate the magnitude of Clyde’s impact on K&L. Notwithstanding the fact that there would be no K&L without Clyde, there’d also be a much different company. The warmth and friendship that Clyde has brought echoes throughout. He practices what he preaches: we get to sell really cool, rare, aged, allocated, and special wines—but, thanks to Clyde, we’ve gotten to taste those too. Never has there been an event where Clyde is present without some exciting bottle he’d dug up from the cellar. He’s showed us the joy of collecting wine: it’s saving a bottle for the perfect moment, and then sharing it with people who will enjoy it too. In doing so, he brought us together, off of the sales floor and around a table over good food, good drink, good company. That is Clyde’s presence in a nutshell.

Don’t Forget Bordeaux's 2023 Vintage: High Quality and Well Priced

The 2023 campaign was particularly fascinating, showcasing a more classic expression than we’ve seen in a long time, along with downward pricing pressure and production that supported broad offerings. It also exists amid several outstanding vintages currently on the market, including the superlative 2019s, the long-term 2020s, and the ripe, resilient 2022s. No other vintage in Bordeaux faces as much competition in terms of quality.

Remarkable Aged In-Stock Bordeaux

One of our core beliefs that will not change is that you should be able to walk into K&L any day and find a perfectly aged Bordeaux direct wine at a reasonable price. The wines we’re featuring today speak volumes to this, with perfectly mature examples, including an epic 75-year-old Cantemerle with ideal provenance.

Inspiring Pre-Arrivals: Bordeaux at Its Best

This curated set highlights some brilliant wines from recent vintages that clearly demonstrate the remarkable collectible value of Bordeaux’s finest. Leading the way is Bellefont-Belcier, recently acquired by the Kwok team and quickly becoming one of the must-visit estates in the region. Occupying enviable terroir in the heart of St-Émilion, Bellefont-Belcier hit a home run with their 2020, a wine that competes with its neighbors at multiples of the price. On the Left Bank, Phélan-Ségur and Marquis d’Alesme are producing their best-ever wines at an impressively reasonable price point.

Introducing Our New Bordeaux Buyer: Ryan Moses

It’s a bit of a fool’s errand to try to follow in Clyde’s footsteps. But my years working with him have inspired me to realize that the biggest challenges are often the most worthwhile. I’ve also been fortunate to learn from Clyde how to run a rewarding and compelling Bordeaux program, and my main goal is to continue that legacy, ensuring that the remarkable depth and selection at K&L remain fundamental to our organization’s future.

Big News from a Beacon in the Bordeaux Biz

I don't know where to start, but I will be brief here as I am sure there are a lot of great Bordeaux wines to get to in this newsletter. As some of you already know, I have retired from K&L after starting it with my partner Todd on December 31, 1976!

Irresistible Rhône: Wines of Character, Depth, and Value

The Rhône Valley embodies so much of what we love about wine. Are you looking for something that is both accessible and delicious? How about a fun and dynamic white wine that consistently overdelivers? Perhaps you seek a special bottle to age gracefully in the cellar, or a wine to build a meal around? The Rhône has an answer for all of the above—and more.

Xavier Vignon's Unique Vision for the Rhône Valley

Xavier Vignon is one of our favorite winemakers in the Rhône. He’s a well-known winemaking consultant who works with other producers around France; but when he sets his skills on his own wine projects, the results are dazzling. He often eschews the norms of the Rhône—for example, he often draws on his experience working in Champagne to employ similar blending techniques to Rhône blends. His are some of the best most intriguing wines on our shelves. Of course, his typical appellation wines are fantastic as well. His Côtes du Rhône, Beaumes-des-Venise, and Lirac wines are always best sellers and offer incredible QPR when they are in-stock.

Mas de Libian's Biodynamic, Chillable Reds from Southern Rhône

Even though they are an historic property, Mas de Libian still falls a little under the radar. For me, though, they check a lot of boxes. They have long practiced organic farming and are now Demeter-certified biodynamic. They make fresh, vibrant wines that are accessible, quaffable, sumptuous, and compelling. It doesn’t hurt that the property’s terroir is a dead ringer for that of Châteauneuf-du-Pape, with its calcareous iron-rich clay soils and galets roulet (the rolled stones) sitting on the surface and radiating warmth back to the vines. With all these pluses, it is hard to believe that not a single one of their delicious wines retails for north of $30!

K&L Wine Merchants

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