Usually when I go to Bristol Farms and peruse the wine section I experience sticker shock, since the prices there are anywhere from 10% to 30% above typical retail mark-up. Today, I experienced shock for the opposite reason. Some of my favorite wines of late are on sale there at incredibly fair prices — prices that verge upon or meet wholesale levels (and, which, in fact, might very well be a mistake).

Rush to the Bristol Farms at Beverly Boulevard and Doheny in Beverly Hills to pick up the 2006 LIOCO Indica Red for $13.99 a bottle, or the 2007 LIOCO Rosé of Pinot Noir/Carignane for $9.99 a bottle. Both have signage indicating that they’re on sale for $3 off the normal pricing of $16.99 and $13.99 respectively; however, the LIOCO MSRP on each is actually $19.99 and $16.99, and it’s likely that somebody with the price gun screwed up and marked them down an extra $3 each. The 2007 Sonoma County Chard is correctly marked at $19.99. I don’t know if they’re similarly marked at other Bristol Farms locations.

I sell the Indica for $20 and the Rosé for $16 and already think they’re a steal. So, for once (and perhaps once only) I’m going to suggest you buy wine from Bristol Farms.

There’s a great piece about LIOCO Winery in the newly revamped LA Times Magazine this morning, written by none other than Alice Feiring! The impossible-to-navigate online version of the Times doesn’t seem to bring up the piece in a search, otherwise we would link to it here.

If you’re in LA, head to the newsstand and pick up the paper, turning to page 118 of the magazine.  No matter where you are, if you want to pick up some of the wines, we’ll send you a copy of the article with your order.  Just be sure to ask. And…welcome to LA, Alice — thanks for such a lovely first article!

We boarded a plane from Santa Rosa to LAX yesterday afternoon, and Kevin O’ Connor of LIOCO happened to be on our same flight. Call this a sign from above that it’s about time we make good on our promise to write up the wines we tasted with Kevin a week ago.

For those of you unfamiliar with LIOCO, a bit of background…only a couple of vintages young, Lioco is a small winery crafting Sonoma wines, many of them from single vineyards. Its principals have a storied history in the wine and food industries of California: Matt Licklider spent many years at North Berkeley Imports, handling sales for some of the world’s finest wine labels. Kevin O’ Connor continues to head up the wine program at Spago in Beverly Hills. And winemaker Kevin Kelley got a degree at Davis and spent his formative years in Burgundy before returning to California. Licklider and O’ Connor teamed in 2005 and the rest, as they say, is history… Read more…

Don’t have time to post any notes right now, but we had the chance last week to taste some really fantastic wines with Kevin O’Connor of Lioco wines. We’ll be talking about them here and bringing some of them in to the store.

More soon, we  hope! In the meantime back to our nap, errrr, back to the WITS!