I got into wine by accident, taking a part-time job at a small shop in Noe Valley while finishing school. At first, I was just restocking shelves and ringing people up, but I kept getting pulled into conversations—someone looking for a bottle under $20, someone else trying to remember what they had on vacation in Spain. I started tasting more so I could give better answers, and eventually it stuck.
After a few years, I was doing the buying for the store and working with distributors, trying to balance what I liked with what regulars actually came back for. That’s where most of my perspective comes from—seeing what people pick up, what they come back to buy again, and what sits untouched.
On this site, I write about the bottles that pass through the shop, the trends I notice, and the questions I hear over and over. Some posts come from staff tastings, others from slow afternoons when there’s time to open something new and see how it changes over a couple of hours.
A lot of my ideas come from customers. Someone asks for a good white that isn’t too sharp, or a red that works with takeout, and I end up going down a rabbit hole trying different options. This is where I keep track of what I find along the way.