Meet Our New Burgundy Buyer: Tom Zacharia

Meet the Buyer: Tom Zacharia

Tom Zacharia is K&L’s new Burgundy buyer. He grew up in his family’s business, Zachys, spent five years at Gallo, and bought for Zachys before joining K&L. We asked him about growing up around wine, how he found his way back to it, and how he approaches Burgundy.

Your family owned Zachys, so you grew up in the business. Were you around wine all the time growing up?

Definitely! It was all around me. I remember playing with Matchbox cars with my brother on the sales floor on Sundays. This was before wine stores in New York were legally allowed to open on Sundays, so my dad would go in to work while the store was closed, and we’d zoom the cars all over the floor while he worked.

He had us putting stickers on boxes from middle school on, and I ended up working at the store every summer and holiday break after that, in basically every department imaginable.

Wine was omnipresent at home too, always at the dinner table. On Halloween, my mom, my siblings and I would carve dozens of pumpkins and put up tons of decorations outside the house. While my mom gave out candy to the kids, my dad gave out a glass of wine to the adults.

Did your parents teach you about wine, or was it more in the background?

Mostly in the background. My dad taught me some, and I learned as I worked at Zachys, but a lot of it was learning through osmosis, just from being surrounded by it.

Did you always know you wanted to stay in the business?

Yes and no. Growing up, I always imagined I might be in it one day, and I always enjoyed being around it. In the last six weeks of senior year, my high school had a project called “Senior Options,” where you took an unpaid internship anywhere you wanted and then presented what you learned to your advisor and classmates. In junior year, my dad asked if I’d be interested in working at a winery for it. I ended up spending a little over a month at Château Troplong Mondot, working in the vineyards and cellar by day and helping host international visitors in the evening. My teacher jokingly said she’d approve it on the condition that she could come along.

After that, I tried to get other experiences, and they always seemed to lead me back to wine no matter how hard I tried. In college, I applied to work at Putnam Market, a gourmet grocery store and sandwich shop owned by one of my business professors, specifically because I wanted to try something other than wine. They told me they had no openings, but that their wine store next door was hiring. So I spent the year at Putnam Wine, stocking shelves alongside the owner, William, and lending him my Verizon Fios login so he could watch his favorite Premier League team, Fulham.

After I graduated, I worked in craft beer for a couple of years. But shortly after starting that job, I started a wine blog.

I probably should have just taken the hint!

What did you do professionally before K&L?

After a couple of years in craft beer, I talked with my dad about getting back into wine. My long-term goal was to return to Zachys, but the family rule was that you had to spend at least two years working professionally somewhere else before joining the family business. I wanted experience in another part of the industry so I could come back bringing real value. Whatever role I started in, I wanted to have earned it, not to have it because it was a family company.

So I took a job at Gallo, the largest winery in the world, but still a family-owned one. I spent five amazing years there expanding their luxury sales in the Northeast, first in New Jersey, then Massachusetts, and finally back home in New York. I’m still incredibly grateful to the people I met and learned from there. Most importantly, it’s where I met my wife, Alyssa, easily the best thing to come out of my career in wine.

At the start of 2022, I rejoined Zachys full time, both on the leadership team as a family member and as a buyer for US wines and the Southern Hemisphere, and eventually Champagne, spirits and, briefly, Italy. After my family sold the business, Zachys and I parted ways, and that’s how I found my way to a new family business here at K&L.

Any life-changing bottles?

Laurent-Perrier “Grand Siècle Les Réserves” Iteration No. 20 from magnum completely changed my sense of what Champagne could be. It spends over 20 years on the lees, and somehow shows primary, secondary and tertiary character all at once. Magic captured under cork.

What’s your approach to Burgundy?

It’s still evolving! I’ve always loved Burgundy (when I could afford it, which wasn’t often), so getting to buy it now is a total thrill. The wines I get most excited about are the ones that captivate me with both their quality and their price. The first half happens all the time in Burgundy. The second half is harder to come by, and that’s what makes the hunt worth it.

My goal is to find Burgundy at every price point that thrills our customers: everyday value bottles (yes, they still exist), new discoveries and producers at the forefront of the category, and of course rare collectibles.

What advice would you give someone getting into Burgundy?

Don’t be intimidated! Prices can be dizzying, but there are great affordable wines to start your journey with. Taste wines from different parts of Burgundy and get a sense of which ones excite you. A couple of recent discoveries I’d recommend at reasonable prices:

• 2023 Domaine Benoît Cantin Irancy “La Grande Côte,” $29.99

• 2024 Domaine Guillaume Curveux Pouilly-Fuissé 1er Cru “Les Vignes Blanches,” $29.99

What do you do outside of wine?

I love cooking feasts for friends and family, traveling with my wife until we miss our dog too much and rush home to him, and exploring new parts of New York City.