Emilia Valencia and Michael Yarmark are Thirst Wine Merchants. We met and fell in love with each other, and with food and wine, in Northern California. In terms of wine, our major turning point occurred when we began to shop at Kermit Lynch Wine Merchant in Berkeley, California, which is the retail store of the renowned importer Kermit Lynch. There we discovered delicious, traditional French and Italian wines made by independent winemakers. We read Kermit Lynch’s book, Adventures on the Wine Route. We traveled to most of the winemaking areas mentioned in the book, and many that weren’t.

When we moved to New York, we became really frustrated that we couldn’t find many of the wines we loved, and that many of the new wines we did find weren’t very good. We began to dream of opening a wine store that would sell the wines for which we were searching and staffing it with people who share our vision. In short, our thirst became our mission: To bring the type of thirst-inspiring, natural, terroir-driven wines we first discovered at Kermit Lynch Wine Merchant to Brooklyn!