KL Worldwide

China seems to be in the news every time you look, but who knew they were such wine fanatics? Meet Mr. Jianwen Zhao (in the yellow jacket), Mr. Jack Lee (far right), and Mr. Zhang (far left) with Jefferson and longtime Karl Lawrence customer and friend, Powell Yang.

In China, Mr. Zhao is the owner of Dong Zhou Fu Long World Wines. He's famous for showcasing more than 1000 world wines, specializing in Bordeaux. You can check out his portfolio in one of his many tasting rooms or in his quarterly magazine, Wine and Life.

Here's his tasting room in Qingdao, the same city famous for brewing "Tsingtao." We're sure you're all already familiar with the beer, so now you can be familiar with the correct spelling.

Mr. Zhao and his crew left Napa Valley with more than a pallet of Karl Lawrence. So next time any of you guys are in China, make sure to go check him out.

Walker Ryan's Professional Debut

Walker with hype girls on the red carpet in SF.

Seeing as Karl Lawrence is probably the only winery in the valley to offer sponsorship to skateboarders, we would love to congratulate our close friend and St. Helena native, Walker Ryan, on his recently crowned status as a "Professional Skateboarder" for Organika Skateboards.

Although a career in skateboarding seems completely removed from the stereotypical Napa Valley lifestyle and anything winemaking, Walker chose to showcase his roots, even as a skateboarder. Here are his first professional board graphics:

If you come by the office, you'll see one of these hanging on the wall.

As if the bottle, glass, and grapes weren't enough, he even gives a shout-out to St. Helena and Napa Valley on the bottle. The Organika crew then went even bigger by actually making a couple dozen cases of the pictured wine and selling it at Walker's red carpet party in San Francisco.

A packed house at the Mezzanine. Ric and Cheryl were getting down in there somewhere.

Rumor has it, Walker had Karl Lawrence in mind for his signature wine, but given that Ric was in Ireland, they weren't able to hook up. So Walker called up his buddy Carlo Trinchero at Taken wines, and they did an awesome job. We suppose that makes them the second winery to sponsor skateboarding.

Check out Walker's blend of amazing skateboarding and beautiful shots of the Napa Valley in his pro-debut video part:

Check out Organika, here: www.organikaskateboards.com

And Taken Wine Co.: www.takenwine.com

A Harvest Blurb

Greetings, Karl Lawrence Nation!

First of all, we'd like to thank all of you for your wonderful response to our 2007 release. We plan on sending out orders on Monday the 24th (weather permitting, of course). And while it's currently just our initial limited release, the majority of our list will be getting an e-mail offer sometime next week.

Also, we have finally updated our website. Yes, it's true. Although Mike, Bryan, and Ric are in a state of cyber denial, we've come to believe that our website hasn't changed since around the time the Internet first came on the scene. So go check it out: karllawrence.com. The blog is linked on there as well.

In other news... while most of us (most of the Valley, in fact) have been neck-deep in this year's extremely late-harvested grapes, Ric has been off roaming the countryside of his native land. For the big six zero, Ric and Cheryl ventured to Ireland for two weeks. Ric had been there once before for just about twenty-four hours.... thirty-eight years ago.

Ric throws a cheers at Temple Bar, Dublin.

Although the two of them had a marvelous time singing along to traditional Irish pub songs and drinking dark beer (although the picture shows otherwise), the wine was, well, ... sub par. Luckily Ric had a few bottles of Aldin stashed in his golf bag.

So when you guys head across the pond, we suggest you do the same.

Our Wine and the Dutch

Jo (pronounced Yo... as in "Yo, Jo!") and Ineke Van Liempt visited us from the Netherlands and had a swell time:

Here, Ineke and Jo put their game faces on with Nelson Larios (middle). The Dutch soccer fanatics were quite thrilled to discover Nelson's past as a proffesional futbóler in El Salvador.

The Van Liempts came all the way to California for a true Napa Valley experience. So we gave them a bunch of Karl Lawrence to drink and took them to our friends over at Clif Family farm (where they met the farm assistant, Nelson). They happened to be throwing an excellent harvest party. We even got a video to prove it:

In other news:

The Karl Lawrence Buick got a wash by Mrs. Miller's (Nicholas' old principal at PUC Elementary) fifth grade class:

And, according to Holly Mason, KL and Clif Family Winery's The Climber, can share a table:

Oh yeah. And... Ric turned 60. Yep. 60.

Check out the Clif crew: www.cliffamilywinery.com

Staglin Music Festival

This upcoming weekend is the Staglin Music Festival for Mental Health. It's a weekend we here at Karl Lawrence look forward to every year.

If any of you should happen to attend, Ric and Cheryl will be there pouring you some splendid wine. And while we already know we're up there in your wine power rankings, you can compare our juice to about 75 other great wines from around the Valley.

All of the excellent food, wine, and company will then shine even brighter with the array of musical and celebrity goodness: Scientific Symposium, Dionne Warwick, Congressman Patrick Kennedy and the one, the only, Glenn Close. Ric has been a fan of Dionne Warwick since high school and cries every time he catches a Glenn Close flick.

So come on down, relax, and support a great cause. For more information, and to see the numbers this event has raised in it's seventeen years of existence, click here. And then check out Staglin's whole story at www.staglinfamily.com.

And since we haven't had a blog update in a month, here's a very small peek at what we've been doing/who we've been entertaining in the office:

This here is Mike and Cheryl Strenge, with Jefferson, from Toronto. They're laying up a bunch of Karl Lawrence at 55 degrees for their month long stay in Saint Helena next year. Way to plan ahead.

So... when are you going to come see us?

The Wynns from their Perspective

These will lack captions, but here are a slew of shots from Jason's camera. Needless to say, they are a much finer quality and much more artistic than those our own staff photographer shot. Enjoy.

Thanks, Jason!

And, in case you missed it some how, get the full story of the Wynns in the post below.

Karl Lawrence has Gone with the Wynns

In case you haven't heard of them, the Wynns are a newlywed couple in the middle of a two-year RV road trip across the country. They travel from state to state in search of anything and everything fantastic and broadcast it to the world via blogs, videos, tweets, and the like.

While these fantastic endeavors range from music festivals to ski resorts to coffee shops, the Wynns got in touch with Karl Lawrence and decided to come on over to the Valley. They parked their RV up on the Henry Brothers' Ranch.

We're sure their own chronicling of their adventure in wine country will be much more epic than our little cell phone pictures, but just to give you a taste, here's a few snapshots of their time with us in Saint Helena:

Here the famous couple, Jason and Nikki, get their first, or second, taste of Napa Valley.

Here's the bigger gang at the KL office. Left to right, back row: Doug Gallagher of Soñador Winery, Jacob Wynn, Lorri and Mitch Hirsch, and Cara and Ken Arnold. Jason and Nikki are in front.

Note: Jacob Wynn was just visiting the Valley, but will study film at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington on a soccer scholarship, in the fall. The Hirschs and Arnolds are from Parkland, Florida and made it to the KL office via recomendation from Mike and Alison De Young.

Here the Wynns sample some barrels at Staglin with Ryan, the enologist, and our own Chris Pratt, the assistant winemaker.

Well, Wynns, to put it simply, we envy your epic journey. But we hope you had a good time with the Karl Lawrence crew, and can't wait to see where your RV takes you next.

Watch the Karl Lawrence and HBR RV episodes and keep updated with the Wynns across the country, here: http://www.gonewiththewynns.net/