Lettie Teague is one of America’s great wine writers. And since 2010 she’s had one of America’s great wine columns in the Wall Street Journal. She writes about a broad swath of the wine world, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that her interests often overlap with ours.

Customers come in, call and email looking for the wines she’s discussed every time the Journal publishes a new piece. Sometimes we’ve emailed and sometimes we’ve blogged about her column and the wines we carry. But we realized that with this degree of steady interest we ought to make it easy for people to find the wines she’s talking about.

So we’ve created a collection for our San Francisco Store store, where you can find all the wines we have in stock that have rated a mention in her column.

Now, onto her most recent column about "intimidating wines":

At Flatiron Wines we love wines that tell stories – often stories about obscure corners of the world with old traditions, rare grapes, idiosyncratic producers, and fascinating flavors.

We know such wines can be different from what American consumers are used to. One of the things we love about working in the wine world is discovering these wines and then finding ways to make them accessible to our friends. We think it’s great for the winemakers to find broader audiences, and great for our food and wine culture to have a broader set of wines to choose from.

So we love it when we writers with a bigger platform than ours takes on a similar project. In her recent article on “intimidating wines,” Lettie Teague does Bacchus’ work, familiarizing readers with some of our favorite off-the-beaten-path wines.

It’s a good piece, showing just how subjective the question of what even is “intimidating” (California Chardonnay? Sure, in some contexts).

Some of these wines are, of course, very limited and won’t last long. A couple of others are staples that we tend to have year-round. But if you’re having trouble finding any of the wines from Lettie’s piece, don’t despair: there’s a whole world of distinct and rewarding wines out there waiting for you.

And there’s no better way to start discovering them signing up for our weekly Newsletter. Not only will you get great stories about wines and the people who make them, you’ll get early access to limited wines and at special pricing, too.

In the meantime, here are five of our favorite "intimidating wines" for you to fall in love with.  

1. 2018 Paitin Bonina Langhe Freisa 

2. 2017 Bernard Baudry Chinon Les Grézeaux  

3. 2018 Michel Gahier Arbois Rouge Trousseau La Vigne du Louis 

4. 2018 von Winning “Winnings”

5. 2018 Au Bon Climat Santa Barbara County Chardonnay

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