Bacchus
A shout-out is in order for one of the bigger wine stores on the west coast, K&L Wine Merchants. As much as I love the smaller shops, hole in the wall places with a ton of personality, I head right to K&L when I’m looking for either something obscure, or a lot of something. Or a lot of something obscure.
Luckily enough, K&L was and still is a family-run company, so if you live near one of their three stores (LA, SF and Redwood City), you can say you’re patronizing a local-ish business. But at the same time, the selection is huge.
The Hollywood store feels like a liquor-specific Costco - and I mean that only in the best way. It’s cavernous and dark and a little cold and the aisles extend practically beyond the horizon. And yet, amazingly, it’s easy to find everything. The sections are laid out in a sort of intuitive fashion, either by grape or region. I’ve been able to find, within 15 seconds of arrival at the warehouse, Sicilian wines, Hungarian wines, cabernet francs, and white Burgundies. And at check-out I’m consistently congratulated on my excellent taste, which I think they do for everybody as part of their customer service plan. But I don’t care, I’ll take a compliment.
Plus, they buy direct, so everything’s fairly priced. Win!
