Our Story
Have you ever dreamed of making wine? We have. The launch of this site is the first step in what we hope will be a fun, rewarding, and meaningful exploration of the business and art of premium wine making. We invite you along for the journey. We don’t know much about what we’re getting ourselves into, so expect hiccups along the way! For us, life, love, and wine are fundamentally intertwined, all things to be savored and enjoyed daily. In fact, we think that wine is elemental.
Kerith and I met in 10th grade at La Jolla Country Day School in San Diego, CA. We were married on October 16, 1999, and we now are the proud parents of three great kids (well, usually great). The kids are the inspiration for our name - Bruliam - and are budding wine aficionados in their own right.
It’s tough to track our love affair with wine to a specific moment in time and place, but one of our earliest joint memories of wine dates back to the summer of 1994. Kerith had just graduated from Cornell and came out to visit me in Berkeley. We decided to take a day trip up to Napa where I planned on wooing her with a romantic picnic. We stopped at Mondavi because, candidly, that was the only winery I knew by name and sight along Highway 29. After we picked up a couple of bottles of their cheapest house red and some food from a now defunct, local deli, we started driving around looking for our ideal picnic spot. Before long I found a place with a big lawn, lots of shady trees, and no one in sight. We laid out the picnic, popped open the wine, and I proceeded to work my magic.
Apparently my “magic” wasn’t quite working that day since after a mere twenty minutes and a quarter of a bottle of wine, Kerith was already asleep. And right then it happened - a guy in a bathrobe and slippers sauntered by. I tried to ignore him as best as possible, but pretty soon similarly clad gentlemen were cruising by and around us, like we were living a scene out of The Twilight Zone. I woke Kerith, and we quickly packed up our picnic and climbed back in the car.
As we drove away, we noticed the sign that we had missed on our way in:
Napa State Hospital - Department of Mental Health
And thus began our crazy affair with wine. In the years since, we’ve had many wonderful wine experiences, some high brow and quite a few low brow. We’ve survived our cult-cab obsession of the dot-com boom, barreled through the barriques of Tuscany’s major Brunello labels, and enjoyed many an overpriced bottle of red Burgundy at top restaurants state-side. We’ve even volunteered for a blind tasting of box wines (paired, of course, with Frito casserole). Through it all, wine has become elemental, a part of our everyday life and a source of many cherished memories.
With the launch of Bruliam Wines, we strive to instill those sentiments in delicious, drinkable, everyday wines. We hope you’ll share a bottle with us.
We welcome your comments, encouragement, and critiques. You can always feel free to contact us:
Brian - brian@bruliamwines.com
Kerith - kerith@bruliamwines.com
Cheers,
Brian & Kerith Overstreet
Yes, that’s we: our senior prom picture in 1990 and visiting Napa in 2006. We’ll let you figure out which one is which (for the record, mullets were cool in 1990…and still are today).
