Continental Wines offers a carefully selected portfolio of high quality wines from France, as well as some recent selections from Germany and California. We focus on authentic, artisanal wines of genuine character. Some of the producers are world-famous names, others are rising stars and some are undiscovered gems.
We are a small import and distribution company based in Seattle, Washington--committed to seeking out the smaller, artisan winemakers from France, whose emphasis is clearly on quality, not volume. Each wine listed on this site is passionately focused upon representing their own region's unique terroir, varietals and wine making traditions.
All the winemakers, whether completely organic or practicing what is known as "lutte raisonnee" -- (the reasoned struggle), eschew the use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides. All are passionate in their commitment to intelligent stewardship of their land. Not only have they found this to be the most sensible and sustainable way to farm, but moreover, in pursuit of wines with true character and soul, they have found that vineyard ecosystems not destroyed by the sustained use of chemical treatments, give their wines the greatest expression of terroir and the land from which they come.
The wines we offer and those that compose the expanding Continental Wines portfolio, are all examples of restraint and a more delicate hand in their wine making practices. Of course Mother Nature gives what she gives and the winemaker in response, must make a wine that circumstances have delivered. Vintages will vary accordingly. Even though it has become fashionable to boast that great wines are made in the vineyard through the meticulous and dedicated work tending each and every vine throughout the year, it should not obscure the fact that fantastic and pristine fruit, along with the help of Mother Nature, is made in the winery. Great wine is still coaxed into becoming such while in the cellar at the hands of a skilled and attentive winemaker through the myriad of choices that are made at every step in the wine-making process.
Great wine, like any great expression of art, exists at the place of delicate tension, balancing counterpoising colors, images, textures and flavors. The wines in our portfolio will inspire and excite the senses, not dull them. Artists who inherently understand this intriguing and delicate balance, ultimately craft wines, not of brute strength, but of exquisite balance and grand finesse.
