From the moment we met Stefano Bellamoli we were impressed. It doesn’t hurt when someone sends you a pin and tells you to meet them there, and it looks like this. Stefano’s vines are in the Veneto, located in northeastern Italy and, more specifically, just up the hill from Verona, where Romeo called out to Juliet. Stefano is like your friend who has impeccable taste, is always dialed in with their fashion and music selections, and has a strong point of view on most things. And his point of view on wine makes him such an exciting new producer of Valpolicella. The Il Sasso wines are a ref ..read more

  Traveling anywhere these days can have challenges, but for the most part, we are used to traveling to peaceful and relaxing places. We thought just that when we set out to Italy a few months ago...a delightful trip to Central and Northern Italy without any hiccups. Insert hiccups: travel delays, lost baggage, Autogrill espresso (thank you Will!). However, the floods near Emilia-Romagna were not something that we ever expected. We were scheduled to visit the winery of Mutiliana with our friends from Portovino- the US Importer of the wines and our good friends. The issue was the road ..read more

    If you don’t already know, you need to know the wines of power couple Catherine and Pierre Breton. I was introduced to their impressive range very early on in my wine career. In the beginning weeks of my first job in wine, I was lucky enough to taste a 1996 Bourgueil cabernet franc from the Breton’s legendary vineyard, Les Perrières. In fact, this was the first true bottle-aged wine I had ever tasted. It was quite the introduction to the world of age-worthy, complex wines meant for the long haul. Flavors of black cassis, leather, mushroom, and spice all overwhelmed my senses, a ..read more

Traveling the wine route from Pic-St-Loup to Tavel, you will find yourself in the Gard, an area in the Languedoc where Ludovic Engelvin tends his vines around the village of Combas. Engelvin is a brooding man who looks more like a rockstar than your typical vigneron. Appearance aside, he is sure to produce some of the purest, most mouthwatering Grenache you can find in this sunsoaked corner of France. Englevin’s story is similarly atypical. He says himself that he “started from zero,” having no family history of winegrowing, no estate to work with, his family didn’t even really drink wine at ..read more

We are always asked where our ceramics come from… We collaborated with our sweet friend Katherine Tucker of Civil Stoneware before we opened to create the perfect plates, olive bowls, honey dishes, and coffee mugs to compliment our artisanal food and coffee program. Civil Stoneware studio is located in the heart of the civil rights district in Birmingham, Alabama. The collection is made by a team of artists led by Katherine, a potter who’s been throwing pots over 17 years. After completing her fine arts and design degree in Georgia, she moved to Alabama to intern at the Birmingham Museum of ..read more

Arianna Occhipinti was one of the first producers I fell in love with when I started at Golden Age. I was 21 years old, and just discovering the differences between the Aldi riesling I had been regularly consuming and this new world of low-intervention wine in which I was suddenly immersed. I found Arianna’s website and quickly fell in love with how she talked about wine. Arianna talks a lot about “respecting the wine as if they were a person.” For her, this kind of respect means considering their world, history, and atmosphere. She is led by the grapes, giving attention to what they need an ..read more

We couldn’t be more proud to offer such an enviable selection of wines from Envínate. Talk about wines that are hard to come by! These guys are farming micro-plots of vines in some of the most extreme terrain in the world. As you can imagine, production is quite limited, and these can be difficult to get your hands on. We are extremely lucky to be able to have such a robust array of wines on our shelves from one of the world’s most exciting cult producers. Envínate (which translates to “wine yourself”) came about in 2005 as an idea amongst four friends, Roberto Santana, Alfonso Torrente, Lau ..read more

  Three years in the books. Cheers to all the late nights, hard work and hustle put in by our staff- current and the ones who have moved on to new chapters in their lives- we want to thank you for taking care of people and making them feel comfortable and welcome. We wouldn't be here without you. We'll raise another glass to our distributors and suppliers who make it possible to do what we do. We couldn't do this without you either. And to you, our customers who trust our recommendations and have become like family. Thank you for all of your support. And last but not least, our spouses, w ..read more

  Our recent trip to Beaujolais came after a few days tasting some of our favorite producers in the Jura. We’ll dive into our Jura trip in the coming weeks but one thing that stuck out to me while we were on our way to Beuajolais, was how a local natural wine shop owner referred to people from Beaujolais. “They like to party!” It still makes me smile thinking about how that was his statement about the Gamay capital of the world. But you know what, in their own way- It’s true. And I cannot think of a better example than the wines and the people behind Laurence and Remi Dufaitre. We initial ..read more

  There is very little that we can add to the conversation that hasn’t already been said about Jean Foillard and what he has done for Beaujolais and the natural wine world at large. So we’ll share our experiences with Fanny from our recent visit to the winery in Beaujolais. Fanny is Jean’s daughter-in-law, and she graciously met us at the Foillard winery and guided us through the latest vintages of Jean’s wines and her partner Alex’s wines. Alex is working with his father on the Jean Foillard wines and making his own label appropriately titled Alex Foillard. Alex approaches his winemaking ..read more