Meet the Staff Series: Chris Puppione

We at K&L are fastidious about our website and have a stable of editors who make it their mission to check every comma and critic review that goes up. In today’s Meet the Staff blog, we meet one of our fearless Grammar Crusaders, Chris Puppione! Chris and I actually started at K&L at the same time, back in early 2015, so he’s just celebrated his seventh anniversary with the company. Since then he’s had his hands full, starting both a family and a family winery! I wanted to know what it was like to be on the production side of things after so many years in retail, so I peppered him with questions.


Kate: Can you tell our readers what do you do at K&L, and how long you have worked here?
Chris: I am an editor in the Marketing Department, working mostly on content for the wines on the website. I started with K&L back in 2015. March of 2015 I think.

Kate: How did you get interested in wine?
Chris: Family table at the holidays. Moving my grandmother out of the old neighborhood in Oakland up to Calistoga when I was a kid and seeing the orchards and vineyards was quite a departure from growing up in the East Bay. My great grandfather Pietro Puppione would make his own wines at home with grapes he bought from a local grower who had a horse-drawn cart. 

In college, when attending Sonoma State, I would pile my buddies into my VW van and cannonball down Hwy 12 to hit as many wineries as we could for tastings (which was more like drinking) and finish the day in the square in Sonoma with sandwiches from the deli there. Eventually, I became more discerning about what I was "tasting" and started developing my own preferences—which is when I knew I was in trouble. That really got me going down the path of being curious about why I liked certain wines and not others.

Kate: So you grew up with wine on the table?
Chris: Oh yes. In many forms. We were by no means a “wine family.” My parents were educators, and we had pretty modest means, but wine was something that was always there.

Kate: And after all those tasting excursions, did you intend to get into winemaking/the wine biz? What inspired you to do it professionally?
Chris: I actually had no intention of being in the wine industry in any capacity. In fact, I spent nearly 15 years in education and athletics before taking my first job in the industry at Robert Mondavi Winery, on the hospitality side of the business. I figured teaching folks about wine was a lot easier than teaching 15-year old boys about Shakespeare.

Kate: Ha! There are a lot of us liberal arts majors who have made our way to wine.
Chris: In truth, when I become curious about something, I have a hard time just dipping my toe in. I kind of go whole hog. So I have worked in the industry in marketing, hospitality, sales, production, management, domestic, and imports. I am a Diploma student with the WSET, I have my CSW, and have taken courses at Sonoma State through the Wine Business Institute. Funny thing—I have never taken a course on winemaking though.

Kate: And has it been? Easier than teaching Shakespeare?
Chris: Oh, talking to people about wine is definitely easy. But I still miss Shakespeare.

Kate: So you were working at K&L, and you got bit by the winemaking bug. How did that happen? I read a bit about it on your website, but do you want to tell the story for readers?
Chris: I have some great friends who make wonderful wines up here in the Russian River, and really I was inspired by what they were doing. And I feel like that is what really makes wine special to me. When I open up my wine fridge and look at the bottles, I can tell a personal story about every single one—and I wanted to do that for my family. I am very proud to be the father of my children and the husband to my wife, and I wanted to honor them and our stories by making wines we could share with others and invite into our traditions. So I secretly secured one ton of Syrah fruit from a vineyard in our neighborhood and surprised my VERY pregnant wife on the morning of the pick with the news that we would be making a wine with our daughter's name on it. Thankfully, she indulged me without incident.

Kate: Aw that's very romantic. Was she surprised?
Chris: She was very surprised—perhaps confused, even? But she knows how I am, which is what allows her to tolerate me.

Kate: How was the experience of making wine? Did it match up to what you expected after years of studying and working in the biz?
Chris: It was and still is very humbling. I have found that the more you do anything, the more you discover what you don't know. As I said, I am lucky to have some great friends who have been mentors and even counselors at times. Our approach to winemaking is not complicated by any means. We foot tread our fruit. We use native yeast. We age the wines in neutral oak. We are quite minimalist, really. But like Thelonius Monk said, "Simple ain't easy."

Kate: So, would you consider your wines in the "natural" camp?
Chris: Not by manifesto or anything. We just find that often the simplest approach to anything is the best one. If that makes the wines "natural," then sure—but we aren't zealots or anything. Our goal is to have wines with a vivacity that is immediately recognizable on the nose and palate. Really—we just want to make wines that people would want to crush while sitting with us in our backyard around the fire pit.

Kate: And how did you decide what style you wanted to work in? And why Syrah?
Chris: When I worked for Martine's Wines, I discovered so many wonderful wines that were using these similar approaches: focusing on great farming with purity of fruit and freshness in the wines. As for Syrah, my wife and I just really love cool-climate Syrah, and where we live is a great place to do just that. So for our daughter's wines, we made Syrah. Our son has two wines as well: one is a Cabernet Sauvignon/Syrah blend inspired by Domaine de Trevallon, and the other is 100% Cab but in a very energetic style and aged in—yep—neutral oak. We just love wines with energy.

Kate: Where are you sourcing your fruit?
Chris: Our first two wines came from Odyssey Vineyard—a three-acre, organically farmed Syrah vineyard here in the Russian River. My son's wines come from Fiore Estate Vineyard in Alexander Valley. And in 2021, we were very lucky to source our newest Syrah wine from the Don Miguel Vineyard in the very cool Green Valley sub-AVA in the Russian River Valley.

Kate: How can people find your wines?
Chris: We did our first release here in February, so our website is the best way to have access to our wines. Our lots are very small—just 2–3 barrels each, so between 45-70 cases each, so we encourage folks to sign up for our mailing list (also on puppionefamilywines.com) to stay informed. We will release the wines twice a year.

Kate: What do you guys like to drink when you're not drinking your own wines?
Chris: Lots of bubbles. All kinds from everywhere. Cremant, grower Champagne, Pet-Nat from Bergerac and Idaho. We also love wines from the Savoie and those from our friends, like Jolie-Laide, Joseph Jewell, and Passalacqua.

Kate: Any chance you'll make bubbles in the future?
Chris: No, I will stay in my lane.

Kate: Reds are your lane?
Chris: No, still wines are where we will stay. I need to make a white wine for my mom.

Kate: Do you think that working at K&L has influenced your winemaking at all?
Chris: Working at K&L has absolutely had an impact on how we make wines, because, truthfully, making wines is another way of storytelling. I have the luxury of reading and editing a lot of wonderful stories about the producers and the brands we work with at K&L: learning who they are and what they do and why has definitely inspired us.

Kate: That's awesome. Any tips for aspiring winemakers?
Chris: I am the quintessential shoulder tapper. I love asking people how they do things and why. And luckily, I have been able to ask a lot of great and generous people. And immerse yourself in the experience in as many ways as you can. I have worked for wineries, importers, and now I work for Coravin—I am in this! It is great to know the story from as many perspectives as you can.

Kate: Thank you so much for sharing your wine journey with us!