When she was twenty, Kay took a wine course from the prestigious L’Acadamie du Vin in Paris. While she is fond of saying that, at that age, the course went over her head, it did begin for her a life-long love affair with France and with wine. Kay lived off and on in Paris for fourteen years, completing her doctorate from King’s College in London. For eight years in Paris, she taught an elementary wine tasting course to any willing and interested student in her regular courses.

Today she brings her love of wine to Basic Necessities located in the beautiful rolling hills of Virginia. The shop, which she founded in 1997, emphasizes wines from the south of France, specializing in a wide selection of excellent and affordable wines. Basic Necessities prides itself on “scrumptious little wines, made often by individual growers who still make wine the old-fashioned way, organic and often unfiltered and unfined, allowing the wine to have more taste. We’re about 70 to 80% natural/organic/biodynamic, and while many of the wines are not certified organic, the vines and land are farmed naturally, often by families who’ve held the vineyards for generations. Why pollute the land that has sustained you for years? We carry a lot of small growers farming sustainably, or in the French term, methods lutte raisonnée.”

Ever Wednesday (full) and every other Tuesday (open) at 4 pm, Kay holds an informal wine tasting on the enclosed back porch of Basic Necessities. Locals and tourists alike gather around one of the six tables covered by Provençal tablecloths and learn the intricacies of wine. Call for a reservation, space is limited. To read more about wine, visit Blue Ridge Life Magazine and read Kay’s monthly wine column.

Basic Necessities also stocks a variety of imported cheeses which pair especially well with the chosen wines.

Kay Pfaltz is best known as a local writer. Her books include Flash's Song and Lauren's Story.