I got my first retail job in 2007 at a Brooklyn wine shop called Smith & Vine, also where I met my Oakland Yard partners, Daniel and Glenny, when they joined the staff a few years later. Smith & Vine’s owners, Michele Pravda and Patrick Watson, were wacky but shrewd, fun and generous, with an immense amount of wine knowledge from years working in some of the best restaurants in New York City. Smith & Vine’s selection was an eclectic mix of classic styles and singular oddities gleaned from favorite wine lists, and the inspiration for Oakland Yard.

Similar to Oakland Yard, Smith & Vine had a European focus, featuring mostly French and Italian wines, with just a small section devoted to wines from the US and the southern hemisphere. I can still picture the top shelf where we kept the California whites, including Matthiasson, Wind Gap, Massican, Arnot-Roberts, Copain, and a few other OG ‘New California’ wineries like Donkey & Goat and La Clarine Farm who were farming organically and making balanced, low abv wines with minimal intervention. Also on this shelf was Kenny Likitprakong’s Banyan Gewurztraminer, and it was memorably floral, fruity, crisp, and refreshing.

Kenny started Banyan and Hobo Wine Company in 2002, and has continued to produce wine from organically farmed grapes, consistently delicious and fairly priced, under various labels: Banyan, Hobo, Camp, Parts & Labor, Edith & Ida, Folk Machine, and Ghostwriter. Each year, he works with a myriad of small lots of purchased fruit from Sonoma, Mendocino, Monterey, and Santa Cruz, and his standard of quality is such that we always have a handful of his wines on our shelves at Oakland Yard. Kenny is also a humble, soft-spoken, truly righteous fellow, who fosters the fair and equitable treatment of wine industry workers and regularly donates his time and money to support environmental and community-based organizations.

This Saturday, March 30th, Kenny Likitprakong will be at Oakland Yard, pouring flights of his current releases from 2 to 6pm. Come enjoy some tasty local juice and meet a skilled, kind, and personable California winemaking legend.

But first...TONIGHT - THURSDAY NIGHT FLIGHTS: Rioja tinto y vinos blancos de España
2021 Carballal Cepas Viejas Albariño
2022 Formigo Ribeiro Blanco
2022 Gramona Gessami Blanco 2022 D Mateo La Mateo Rioja
2019 Viña Albina Crianza Rioja
2015 Lopez de Heredia Viña Cubillo Rioja
Tasting flights $15 from 5-9 and wines by the glass until 9pm

SATURDAY 3/30: Special guest winemaker Kenny Likitprakong from Hobo Wine Company
2022 Folk Machine White Light
2022 Folk Machine Jeanne d’Arc Skin Fermented Chenin Blanc
2022 Folk Machine Redwood Valley Valdiguié
2019 Ghostwriter Santa Cruz County Syrah
Tasting flights $15 from 2-6pm and wines by the glass until 9pm

Cheers,
Max