We landed early: caffeinated and on a mission.
Premier week in Napa Valley is not a casual affair. Sunrise departure out of LAX, a Sacramento pickup, a quick team rendezvous—and suddenly we were off to two tightly packed days of tastings, sub-appellation deep dives, and enough Cabernet to recalibrate the palate for weeks.
Read MoreFebruary offers a fresh look at the depth and range of American wine, and this month’s domestic lineup at K&L shows just how compelling and approachable the category has become. From sharply priced, high-scoring Napa Valley Cabernet to small-production Oregon Pinot Noir and Chardonnay with a real sense of place, these bottles highlight the sweet spot where pedigree meets value. We’ve also taken on one of our favorite challenges: just how well can you drink for under $30? Very well, as it turns out. Alongside those everyday standouts, you’ll find a selection of luxurious 97–100-point whites and reds suited for collectors and special occasions alike. Whether you’re refilling the cellar, discovering new producers, or hunting for benchmark bottles without benchmark prices, this newsletter will guide the way. And don’t miss our upcoming in-store tastings and events, where many of these wines come to life in the glass.
Read MoreAs the Domestic Wine Buyer at K&L the part of my job that takes up the vast majority of my time and effort is making sure we have a best-in-class selection of wines that over-deliver on value for money. I taste hundreds of wines every week, travel to wine regions to seek out new talent, and work with dozens of suppliers to try and find you the very best deals in wine, and to do so without cutting corners on quality, and still focusing on small production, artisanal wines.
Read MoreOur selection of fantastic Domestic Sparkling wines continues to grow from strength to strength and as we approach 2026 we have over 70 options in stock. So, what to choose? Well we have the classics: Roederer Estate, Schramberg, J Vineyards. But we also have a beautiful selection of small production sparkling wines that are very much following the boutique, Grower Champagne type model with unwavering focus on quality, complexity and expression terroir. So, as we get ready to ring in another new year (my 15th here at K&L) I decided to highlight a few very special wines that are on my short list for popping when the ball drops (likely at NY time)! Wishing you all a wonderful New Year and health and happiness for 2026 and beyond! Cheers!
Read MoreOn a visit to Napa you’ll also find a thriving agricultural community, young winemakers from all over the globe working in a melting pot of vinous cultures. There are epic food trucks lining Soscol Rd with Google Stars in place of Michelin ones. There are old-school, multigenerational farming families working tirelessly, like their grandparents before them, to eke out a living from this special land.
Read MoreWith the huge amount of trust and recognition K&L has built over 50 years in the business, plus my own deep personal connections to great producers across California and beyond, I strongly believe that the sky is the limit for what we can achieve with this range of wines.
Read MoreAnonymous is without doubt one of the most exciting projects we've launched in decades at K&L. The wines have been extremely well received all around and continue to fly off our shelves as folks drink them and taste for themselves what exceptional values they represent. It's a fun game to play, trying to guess whom we partnered with on each release, and many of you have emailed me some pretty good guesses. However, the most important thing that really drives this project is the quality that's in the bottle. If it doesn't taste good, intrigue and speculation can only carry the wines so far. The wines have to deliver, and I'm really proud of what we've put in bottle. I hope you feel the same way.
Read MoreThe region of Combsville in Napa Valley even describes itself on the official vintners' and growers page as a hidden gem. Despite being just three minutes from downtown Napa, the region is somehow still off the beaten path for most visitors to the valley. Coombsville is one of the more recently established sub-AVAs in Napa Valley, becoming officially recognized in 2011. There is, however, a long history of grape growing in the region going back to the 1880s. To this day the iconic R.W. Moore Vineyard, planted in 1905, is still in production. It was however in the early 1980s that the modern era of Coombsville began and no winery was more instrumental in the founding of this AVA than Farella. Firstly, second generation owner, Tom Farella, wrote and submitted the petition that led to the creation of the AVA. But Farella’s importance goes deeper than simply filing paperwork.
Read MoreOne of my absolute favorite small producers we're working with right now is MarBeso, based in the Sta. Rita Hills. I first got to know owner/winemaker Colin McNanny when he was making the wines at La Honda winery, just down the road from our Redwood City store. I admired the wines he managed to craft at La Honda, especially when you take into account that the team there produced wines from dozens of essentially “backyard vineyards” from Los Gatos to San Mateo. Colin and I became friends with a mutual enjoyment of surfing and finding great hole-in-the-wall taquerias around Redwood City.
Read MoreThe first time I encountered Stolpman was back in 2008 when I was working for Randall Grahm at Bonny Doon Vineyard. As the infamous “Rhône Ranger,” Randall sought out excellence in Rhône varietals throughout California, so it's no surprise that he ended up buying fruit from Stolpman who pioneered Syrah and other Rhône varieties in what was to later become the Ballard Canyon AVA. Stolpman’s Vineyard is planted across a series of undulating hills on the Western side of Ballard Canyon, just a few miles south of Los Olivos.
Read MoreA recent K&L staff trip to Napa Valley saw the NorCal sales team explore the cooler parts of the region with a day in Carneros and Coombsville, two of the southernmost sub-AVAs of Napa, with lots of moderating influence from the nearby San Pablo Bay. We started off the day with an incredible 8:30am visit with Steve Matthiasson at his Cressida Vineyard in the upper Carneros, right at the foot of the Mayacamas range as it descends towards the bay. The weather in Carneros behaved perfectly with thick morning fog slowly receding back to the bay as our crew walked up into the vineyard with the first patches of blue sky being revealed.
Read MoreFor these Anonymous Wine Collective bottles, we've given a pinky promise and staked our reputations on keeping certain particulars under wraps. In return for a little anonymity, we're able to offer incredible pricing on these wines. If these wines were bottled by the original producer, they would sell for 60-70% more. Fortunately for us, the producers had more wine than they needed, and we felt like, gosh that would be an outstanding product to be able to offer our customers. We are extremely fortunate and thankful that our positive reputation has given us access to these wines, and, as more and more of them are released, we hope that you notice the theme of extreme price-to-quality ratios.
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