Sunday 7 April 2019

Three Californian wine warehouses




Welcome to K & L

"Since 1976 we've been proud to offer the world's finest wines, great service and competitive prices. We offer thousands of wines on this site with inventory updates happening in real time. In addition we operate three retail stores, in San Francisco, Redwood City and Hollywood, California."



 K & L Wine Merchants in San Francisco is situated downtown rather than on the outskirts but is big enough to qualify as a superstore.

They aim to have it all and indeed they almost do. We only had time to clock the Friday afternoon throng, ask a question or two of the pleasant and informed staff and fondle a few 'Seven Percenter' bottles including a Californian Counoise



and a Californian Valdiguie too together with others enough to make a good impression.






Welcome to Mission Wine & Spirits

recognized as one of the finest wine & spirit shops in Southern California. Our selection is unparalleled in the quality and variety in diverse categories of spirits and fine wines. Mission has called Pasadena home for over 35 years....

Mission provides an outlet where you can find an array of Wines, Liquor and fine cigars along rare and hard to find products and smoking accessories.






 Mission Wines and Spirits is in Pasadena, also relatively accessible. We had discovered they stocked something we had been looking for for more than a decade - Jim Clelenden's Au bon Climat Aligote.

All those years ago this wine had made a deep impression on us. It brought a realisation that some European grapes actually do much better in the New World than in their original terroir. Aligote had always been nice enough yet somehow disappointing before tasting this Californian version. Even Eastern European Aligotes hadn't exactly bowled us over. This one did.

After all those years of literally fruitless searching, we thought that our bottle had been a one-off and would never be repeated. Even so when preparing for our trip to California we put it in Winesearcher and bingo! There it was at Mission Wines and Spirits.



Mission is a barn of a place it must be said more devoted to spirits than to wine these days. Chaps were trundling barrows of cases here and there. We tried hard to find our bottle but it was a bit like finding your food additive in a vitamin shop. We were beginning to get worried they no longer in stock but a guy behind the desk soon put his hand on our bottle. Even if it turns out not to be as good as our memory, we can't be more excited to taste this Aligote from the sunshine state.



The Only Wine Shop You Need

The Wine House has been serving customers from around the world for over 40 years from our 18,000 square foot facility in West Los Angeles, CA.


 This is the spiel of Los Angeles's Wine House and like K & L and Mission they have the scatter-gun approach to being as inclusive as possible. It was hard to know if their store was downtown or not but it is certainly close to the city rather than in the surrounding area (we must try to get a handle on LA one day).






We had come for this Croatina. Originally noticed on Justerini and Brooks winelist we had planned to sidestep their 6 bottle minimum by buying this bottle on our trip to LA. Again there was a slight flurry before it was found but a very helpful gentleman went into the warehouse (attached to the store) and emerged with our bottle about 10 minutes later.

While twiddling our thumbs, what do you think happened dear Slotovino reader? Another New World Aligote suddenly popped up - this one from Mexico!







A bit more expensive than the Clelenden we had bought at Mission, we left it undisturbed. We already had too much to take home in hold luggage but we know where to go if we ever need to try another New World Aligote.


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