Wine

The philosophy behind our wine is simple. Our entire selection is focused on authentic wines from small producers. The wines we sell come from people with deep roots in the vineyards they farm. These farms exist on parcels of land that you could walk around in a day, and learn the character of over a lifetime. Call them natural wines, or real wines, or alive wines, but behind these hard-to-define terms exists a common set of principles and production methods we feel are fundamental to crafting wine with character, wines with authentic flavor.

Selection... We are picky. Our wines are carefully chosen. We believe there are no lemons at 3CUPS. We arrive at this selection through years of rigorous tasting and through a careful vetting of the people who make our wines. The people who grow the grapes and make the wines we buy have deep roots in the fields they farm. They possess an awareness of food and wine traditions that have been passed down from previous generations who coaxed wine from the same hillsides.

Value... There is a difference between low price and good value. We sell wines that are affordable and also offer excellent value for money. The following fundamentals of flavor, farming and health make our wines exceptional quailty for a sensible price.

Hand Crafted... The wine that we sell is hand-harvested. The human hand is amazing, capable of ferrying fruit to picking baskets undamaged. Even the best high-tech machine harvester will bruise considerably more fruit, and doesn't have the ability to throw on the ground rotten, diseased or under-ripe grapes, a first triage accomplished intuitively by the human harvester. You won't find wines made through complex industrial processes at our store.

Human Scale... We select our wine from small farms. These farms exist on parcels of land that you could walk around in a day and learn the character of over the course of a lifetime. Generally defined, this means they may produce 2,000 or 20,000 cases of wine annually, but not 200,000 or 2 million. Working on this scale, farmers can know the innate nature of each field, each row, perhaps even each vine from which they bring forth fruit, and this knowledge possessed by a dedicated grower leads to wine with great character. This type of wine offers a snapshot of its place in the world to drinkers. You won't find wineries at 3CUPS that are owned by Pepsico, Segrams or Louis Vuitton. We prefer wine made by wine people.

Estate-Bottled... Every wine we sell is estate bottled. It is logical that winemakers care more deeply with their name of the front label. Some nice wines are made by people who purchase fruit, but for our small store we feel buying purely estate-bottled is a small step toward truth in labeling in the wine trade.

Proper Vinification... We are always searching for growers that practice the traditional cellar techniques of their homeland. A wine, like a piece of cheese or even a piece of fruit, is in constant evolution, and by excessively processing it you mute this process. Working in a natural manner indicates belief in your raw materials, allowing them to express themselves, to speak witha a local accent.