Name: Jeff Garneau

What’s your position at K&L and how long have you been with the company? I have been a member of the sales staff in our Redwood City store for four and a half years. My current responsibilities include assisting owner Clyde Beffa with the wines of Bordeaux, focusing on in-store merchandising, sales and customer support.

What did you do before you started working here?

After I completed my undergraduate degree in geography I went on to graduate school, intending to become a university professor. I left school before completing my PhD, but I still have a weakness for maps, particularly of the world’s wine regions. After grad school I spent some time in the public sector working on regional economic development. Right before I joined K&L I spent a couple of years working as a records manager for one of the larger accounting firms. I always dreamed of retiring early and starting a second career in the wine business. I just got started a little sooner than I originally planned.

What do you like to do in your spare time?

Cook. Eat. Drink wine. Preferably with like-minded friends. Read. I am an avid reader. I have spent almost as much time in bookstores over the years as wine shops. Almost.

What’s your favorite movie?

Big Night (1996) with Stanley Tucci and Tony Shalhoub. It’s about two immigrant brothers trying unsuccessfully to run an Italian restaurant in New Jersey in the 1950s. It tells you everything you need to know about food, about life, about success and about family.

What was your “epiphany wine”—the bottle or glass that got you interested in wine? Is there a current wine that you consider the equivalent?

A 1978 Pio Cesare Barolo I had in the late 1990s. It was the first truly mature wine I ever tasted, but I think the reason the wine made such an impression on me was because it tasted exactly the way I was given to understand it would taste. I had read in several different books that an older nebbiolo might exhibit aromas of violets and tar. When I raised the glass it was as if I held instead a handful of violets, crushing them under my nose to release their perfume. A second sniff revealed a wonderfully tarry mineral note that took me back to my boyhood in the South where the summer sun would bake the asphalt, searing your bare feet if you were too slow in crossing the road. I learned two things that night that I have never forgotten: 1) Wine at its best is capable of producing incredibly complex and varied tastes, flavors, and smells, and 2) because we humans respond so powerfully to our sense of smell wine can evoke extraordinary emotions, feelings, and memories. My current “Pio” equivalent is the 1997 LangoaBarton, St-Julien. 1997 is hardly the vintage of the decade, but the wine is showing beautifully right now. It is textbook claret, exactly as it is supposed to be.

Describe your perfect meal (at a restaurant or prepared at home). What wine(s) would you pair with it?

My husband, Chuck, has worked for years to perfect his recipe for roast chicken. It is moist and rich and savory with a crispy skin seasoned only with sea salt, fresh cracked pepper and a little lemon. He usually serves it with a seasonal green vegetable like the fresh asparagus we had last night. He roasts root vegetables like parsnips, potatoes, carrots and turnips and always includes some unpeeled garlic cloves for me so I can spread the roasted garlic on fresh-baked artisanal bread. The meal is always accompanied by a Pinot Noir from California or Oregon, New Zealand or Burgundy. Our traditional favorite, however, is the Joseph Swan “Cuvée de Trois” from the Russian River in California. We drank the 2006 vintage last night.

How do you think your palate’s changed over the years?

When I first started drinking wine perhaps 20 years ago I drank a lot more red wines as well as wines that were bigger and more fruit forward. Now though I drink more balanced, food-friendly wines from all different parts of the world of every type and description.

What do you like to drink?

I try to limit myself to whites, reds, and rosés, still wine and sparkling and fortified wines.

What words of advice do you have to offer people just getting into wine? For those just getting into wine I offer the following advice:  “form impressions readily, form opinions reluctantly.” There is so much to know that one can never approach the study of wine with anything but humility. Keep an open mind. Measure what you learn against what you think you know. And taste, taste, taste. One of my colleagues here at K&L once observed that the best tool for learning about wine is a corkscrew. You learn something from every bottle you open, from every glass you pour. What could be better than that?

If you could have dinner with any three people in history, who would you invite? What wine would you serve each of them?

Eleanor of Aquitaine, Thomas Jefferson and Emile Peynaud. We would start out with a nice bottle of vintage Champagne and then simply sample as many bottles of Bordeaux as ti

What’s your position at K&L and how long have you been with the company?

Wine sales: I’m the Champagne & domestic Cabernet Sauvignon liaison.  I’ve been with K&L since the Hollywood store opened.

What did you do before you started working here?

I was at the Culinary Institute of America in St. Helena running the Wine Studies program.

What was your “epiphany wine”—the bottle or glass that got you interested in wine?

The ’92 Raymond Burr Dry Creek Valley Cabernet Sauvignon.  I was 23 and hadn’t even thought about a career in wine.  I couldn’t stop fixating on the smell of black pepper.  It was the first time that I ever distinguished an individual aroma in a glass of wine.   

 Describe your perfect meal.  What wine(s) would you pair with it?

I love throwing some nice fillets on the grill and enjoying several bottles of wine with my friends.  We’ve paired everything from a Brunello di Montalcino to Rioja to Dry Creek Valley Zinfandel.  Lately, I’m really enjoying big, structured Willamette Valley Pinot Noirs.

How do you think your palate has changed over the years?

California Zins were my first love. Looking for more structure and less fruit, I shifted to California Cabernets.  The natural leap was to Bordeaux and, once in France, Pandora’s Box was opened.  But it was when I tasted the Krug Grand Cuvée that I knew my home was in Champagne.

What do you like to drink?

Bubbles and a balanced Cabernet Sauvignon with a little age on it.  Although a dirty martini can be a great substitute.

What words of advice do you have to offer people just getting into wine?

Whenever possible, taste with others to help develop a consistent wine lexicon and taste wines side by side in comparison to each other to be able gauge the difference in acidity, body and structure.

If you could have dinner with any three people in history, who would you invite? What wine would you serve each of them?

Marilyn Monroe—only to find out if she really did take a bath in 350 bottles of champagne...and what House it was from. 

Dom Perignon—2000 Dom Perignon Brut—to see his reaction to how champagne today is the result of his accidental discovery and what he strived to get rid of.

Myself on the day I turned 21. I’d bring a bottle of Krug Grand Cuvee to show myself what I missed out on earlier.   

Name: John Majeski

What's your position at K&L and how long have you been with the company?

Well, I’m often standing or climbing... oh, you mean “that” position? While not making bad puns, I’m the San Francisco liaison for both Latin and Southern Hemisphere wines, which keeps me on my toasts in a vicarious state of travel to far flung vineyards, bodegas and fynbos. Seriously, I’m very fortunate to work with an amazing group of audacious, inspiring, talented people. And I started working at K&L on my birthday in 2007.   

What did you do before you started working here?

Most recently I worked the wine department at Trader Joe’s on Masonic. Before that I wrote slogans and made buttons advertising the novel concept of world peace. Sold expensive fountain pens that mostly went unsold. Another life ago I designed zip, transit and city maps for the phone company, the front of book stuff that no one looks at anymore.  Prior to that I worked as a Yellow Pages artist. Cared for a gang of goats in northern Norway. And sometime before that I was small. Life is strange. 

What do you do in your spare time?

I never metaphor but I remember her face. Word play, even while unconscious, which may be more often than I think. There are books unread, films unseen, wines uncorked, meals un-et, people unknown, memories unmade. Early Tibet! I am always playing catch the moon—ask my cats, they won’t lie to you. Vito and Harley, they’re cool.

What's your favorite movie?

Amelie. Serendipity is the antidote to apathy.  A joyful lesson in that if you say “Yes” to the Universe, it will answer.

What was your “epiphany wine"— the bottle or glass that got you interested in wine? Is there a current wine that you consider the equivalent?

 My earliest epiphanic experience involving wine? 1974. I found myself sitting tired and alone in a cafe in Siracusa, Sicily, chin on my backpack while watching the “Thrilla in Manila” carnage between Muhammed Ali and Joe Frazier. Suddenly in walked a rowdy group of oil workers who, seeing my sorry state, asked me if I wanted to join them and their English girlfriends for dinner. Sure! So we all piled into their tiny windup Fiats and drove 30 miles over the mountains to god-knows-where we were, piled out into a courtyard that held a long platform table lit with candles and platters of rich red pasta and langoustines, bread and inky squid, prawns the size of one’s fist, and unlabeled flasks of dark volcanic peasant wine that tasted like all the gods poured their blood into it. Still the best meal of my life, so I guess that qualifies.

At K&L, recently the 2007 Château de Montfaucon “Vin de Monsieur Le Baron de Montfaucon” Vin de Pays du Gard seduced my palate in a mini-epiphany. The Rhône shone supreme. And every day there is at least the possibility…

Describe your perfect meal (at a restaurant or prepared at home). What wine(s) would you pair with it?

I remember a wonderful Spanish-Peruvian dish once served at the long-closed Alejandro’s Restaurant on Clement Street in San Francisco called Zarzuela de Mariscos, a stunning seafood stew perfumed with garlic, tomatoes, saffron and all manner of shellfish cooked in their birthday suits. Today I would pair it with a bottle of 1981 Lopez de Heredia Viña Bosconia Gran Reserva.

How do you think your palate’s changed over the years?

When I arrived in California years ago, I discovered the sweet heady hedonism of overripe Zinfandel and bought into the buttered gospel of over-malo’d Chardonnay. There was also a time when Cabernet Sauvignon was the standard bearer. As exposed as I am to so many different wines here, my palate now gravitates to distinctive wines, often made from obscure or near-extinct varieties.

What do you like to drink?

Apart from the many incredible wines I strongly endorse from my sections, both the Loire and French regional wines have managed to keep me sniffing, questing and guessing, which is a very good thing. I love wines from Bandol, Arbois, the Jura and much of the Languedoc, and will never turn down a perfect flute of Franck Bonville “Cuvée Les Belles Voyes” Champagne when offered.

What words of advice do you have to offer people just getting into wine?

Don’t go into a wine store with preconceived notions based on “fear of trying,” bottle price or cult iconic labels. Be open; think of wine as a journey of the mind as well as the palate. Educate yourself by tasting everything you can. Our great Saturday tastings offer an ideal place to start learning. And remember, it’s never wrong to ask for friendly advice.

If you could have dinner with any three people in history, who would you invite? What wine would you serve each of them?

Ok, Rod Serling. Louise Brooks. And last but not least, Ignatz the Mouse from the old 1940s Krazy Kat comic strip. I know he’s not human, but so what? Mice gotta drink too. Back to Rod. A bottle of Macallan 18 year would probably put him in the Twilight Zone, but wine? I don’t know. Louise my dear, 1982 Salon Champagne, nothing else would measure up to your incandescent charm and pure joie de vivre. As for Ignatz, a 1966 Latour, brick red at the rim and still in its prime, perhaps.