Frogs & Clogs Who??
We are an independent, very small wine import company based in Leiden, Zuid Holland.
We try to find little gems in this crazy world of wine making.
We try to find the right wineries for us and you, those who make wines that really stand out. So, we drive to these areas ourselves, meet with them and get a feel for what they do and why they do it. To be able to sell their wines properly, this is very important for us.
For this reason, we only focus on one region at the time.
The Alsace
We source and import from winemakers who don’t export to Holland yet. So, this means all our wineries are small, boutique operations run by owners who really care.
In addition to this, all of them practice biodynamic and sustainable viticulture.
The wines we import are in small amounts as they only produce small quantities of these little gems.
At the moment, we represent 12 wineries from the Alsace.
And 1 winery from the south of France, but who sells their wines through Achillée.
Just a quick note to tell you how we got to this point.
Our background is very much hospitality,
French and Dutch, we met in 2013 while working at St. John’s Tavern, a beautiful and brilliant gastropub in Archway, London.
After that, we both moved on to different places and countries,
Marie-Lou went to Coq d'argent & Fera at Claridge's, both in London. After that, she went back to the mainland Europe and worked at different restaurant, shops & wineries.
And I went to Andrew Edmunds & Bedales Wines, both London, and after that I moved to Rome and start working at Marigold Roma.
While being in different countries we always tried to hangout when & wherever we could.
I guess because of the corona, we both got stuck in one place for the first time in years and had lots of time to think about our next move,
And voila, here we are, at the beginning of Frogs & Clogs
We are still very small and trying to navigate into the world of wine import where it seems very crowded with lots of people doing very cool stuff.
We are trying to stay in 1 area at the time, and as we are always picking up the wines ourselves by car, it will mostly be wines from France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Germany.
For our first run we concentrated on the Alsace and found 4 amazing companies to work with.
Hope you like it
If you really want to know our whole working background,
Maire-Lou
Wineries :
- Château de Chamirey, burgundy
- Château de Lucey, savoie
Restaurant and cave :
- Tablar, Genève
Dennis
RealPubs Pub Company