JAMIE WOLFF - Founding Partner

I grew up drinking French wine, but had a real epiphany with a bottle of Robert Chevillon's 1985 Nuits Chaignots. Eight years of owning a house in the central Loire Valley (in Touraine, near Cheverny), gave me a chance to get to know both the region and the feeling of living with wine, and also gave me the confidence to propose forming a partnership with M. Loire himself, David Lillie. Before meeting David, I spent five years in the salt mines of Christie's Wine Department - a somewhat thankless job made fabulous by the incredible range of mature wine, mostly Bordeaux, that I tasted on the job. My subsequent discovery of the natural affinity between Burgundy and Piedmont has produced a serious Nebbiolo problem, though Riesling, Gruner Veltliner, and Chablis will usually make me sit up and take notice. There's so much good wine in this store that it's getting hard to choose.

DAVID LILLIE - Founding Partner

David received his wine education schlepping cases for 15 years at Garnet Wines, one of NY’s leading discount shops on the Upper East Side. As a buyer and manager he was able to develop his interest in French wines, especially those of the Loire, Rhône and Languedoc-Roussillon. His two previous careers, growing apples in Vermont for 4 years and with a jazz orchestra for 15 years, left him with a fanatical dedication to good, inexpensive wine. His heroes in the wine business are Mark Ollivier, Catherine Roussel and François Pinon, to name just a few. David's wife first introduced him to Loire Valley wines back in 1977, and they have three quite grown children, Georgia, Eben and Julia. He would like to thank Eben, who was part of Chambers Street in the beginning and whose hard work and good cheer helped us through the months after 9/11.