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| Amy Lillard and Matt Kling |
When we visited London in May to attend the Raw Wine Fair we met up again with Amy from La Gramiere who was showing her wines. We have always admired what she and her husband Matt did.
Matt and
Amy met at the Kermit Lynch retail shop in Berkeley. Amy worked at the store
and Matt was a customer. In 2005 they left the Bay Area and moved to a small
town in the Southern Rhone 20 minutes outside of Avignon, where they bought
3.75 hectares of vineyards in the Cotes du Rhone, and a small house, and
started making wine.
Well not
exactly. Long story short they did make the wine, but not without a lot of
sacrifice and a lot of determination. They do almost all of the work
themselves, with occasional help from their friends and family at harvest. The
grapes are hand-picked, without anything added or taken away. They cultivate
without herbicides or pesticides and vinify in concrete vats with naturally
occurring yeasts. The result: a true wine of place made mostly of Grenache with
a little Syrah and Mourvedre.
It's
lively and fresh, peppery, with supple tannins. Originally imported by Kermit
Lynch, Amy told us her wines were currently unavailable in New York. So we
wondered how we could do the situation justice and decided to bring them in
ourselves! Hence our first Thirst Merchants Selection is born. The La
Gramiere Green Label 2011 is just $15/bottle and $13.50/bottle when you
buy a case (in store only).
Going forward we will share some of
our other finds with you. We will soon have an e-commerce site up and running.
As you may know by dropping by our little store in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, we
love those wines that are made in such tiny quantities that essentially if
you're not aware that they're currently available you might miss out!
THIRST
TOTE BAGS ARE BACK!
For a limited time, get one of our
classic totes FREE when you purchase 6 or more bottles.
