Napa’s newest wine bar is also a members-only social club 35%
By Jess Lander0%
7/16/2026, 11:00:00 AM
BS Summary: This article contains 31 faulty reasoning types, including Halo Effect, Biased Writer Voice, and Ambiguity (Equivocation), with Attempt to Sell a Product or Service as the most egregious example at 40.2% saturation with 440 hits. Analysis detected 2,428 faulty-reasoning hits from 1,095 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 42.3% and a BS Rank of 35% (13,943 of 21,175 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 65.80% of the article peer group.
There are hundreds of wine clubs in Napa Valley and they are all relatively similar: Members pay for a few discounted shipments of wine a year and access to special wines and winery events, like pick-up parties (which often cost more money).
But a new wine club, launching in October, is taking a different approach: As members-only clubs surge throughout the Bay Area (e.g., the Battery) and the United States, the Vintners Social Club by K.
Laz will offer a private place for wine geeks to gather without the commitment of a quarterly wine shipment.
The Vintners Social Club is, however, more costly than most wine clubs.
Memberships for locals and out-of-towners range from $1,500 to $5,000 per year (including a spouse or partner), plus a $1,000 initiation fee.
Dues give members access to a wine lounge in Yountville serving revered and hard-to-find wines without the typical markup.
Perks include a wine storage locker, concierge services, the ability to book the club for private gatherings and access to a wide range of events.
Founder Kerrin Laz, owner of the K.
Laz Wine Collection, a curated selection of rare and exclusive wines, envisions Vintners Social Club as “a central hub for people that are doing great things.”
But its primary offering is a wine bar — something Yountville does not currently have — which will be open to the public.
The wine list will include wines from the club’s invite-only “Vintner Members,” consisting of some of California’s cult wineries, sold at their typical retail price.
“I feel we’re a little upside down” in Napa Valley, she said.
“When I go to New York City and see Napa wines on a (restaurant) list for less than they are in Wine Country, we’ve got to re-examine that.
I want a great glass of wine and not have to pay a 4x markup on it.”
There will be food, including caviar service, carts shaving “perfectly ripened” cheese from California creameries tableside and “the best Italian sub” that Laz, who grew up in Long Island, New York, frequently makes for friends.
She’s also working with chef Christopher Kostow (of Napa Valley’s Meadowood, Charter Oak, Ciccio and Loveski) to create a dip inspired by Charter Oak’s popular fermented soy dip.
The programming at the club “stems back” to Laz’s 12 years working as the wine director for the once-bustling Dean & DeLuca marketplace in St.
Helena, which she described as “the North Star for food and wine for the Valley.”
(It closed in 2019; its successor, Gary’s Wine & Marketplace, closed in 2023.)
“We were foragers.
We didn’t make our own products, but we found the best providers doing the best things, and nothing has really replaced them,” she said.
Now, instead of selling the products, she’s going to bring in “the people behind them” to host workshops and connect with club members; Laz cited Humboldt County’s Cyprus Grove creamery, the Regiis Ova caviar company and Incontro Cured, which she said “makes the best Jamón outside the Iberian Peninsula,” as potential partners.
The club will also host wine-centric events for members, including library and vertical wine tastings, and seminars with noted critics and winemakers.
Laz has plans to invite leaders from other industries, such as tech, science and design, to speak as well.
The idea for the social club came from the late Bay Area chef Charles Phan, with whom Laz worked on K.
Laz Wine Collection events for residents of the Four Seasons in San Francisco.
Phan proposed creating a supper club around the collection.
“He got me thinking about it,” she said.
“Before he passed, I was ready to go with it.”
Laz is not the first to attempt a social club in Wine Country.
In 2013, Wing & Barrel Ranch, which specializes in sporting clays and bird hunting, opened in Sonoma County.
In 2017, the Kitchen Collective, a private cooking club, opened in Napa, but closed in 2020.
(It was replaced by Phan’s Slanted Door.)
The Napa Valley Car Club, which provides members access to a fleet of flashy high-performance cars — Lamborghinis, Ferraris and Aston Martins — launched in 2023 and hosts lavish parties at its clubhouse, called the Barn.
Soho House is also coming to Wine Country; a 50-room resort is slated to debut in Kenwood next year.
The Vintners Social Club is located right off Washington Street, Yountville’s main drag.
Laz, a Yountville resident, said she had been eyeing the space, formerly occupied by the JCB Tasting Salon, “for a couple of years.”
The K.
Laz Wine Collection’s current headquarters, also in Yountville, is tiny, and can only host one group at a time, which “doesn’t work when you want more people to be a part of your community,” she said.
So when JCB closed at the end of last year, she jumped on it.
The building already has two connecting spaces; a glass partition will separate one side reserved for members and the other, which will be open to the public.
Laz hopes the club, much like the recent reopening of Yountville’s famous dive bar, Pancha’s, can help boost tourism to the city.
Wine Country visitation is, overall, in a multi-year downturn.
On top of that, Yountville has been impacted by the $300 million transformation of downtown Napa and its flurry of new hotels, which has reversed the longstanding Wine Country dynamic of tourists bypassing the city to make Yountville, home of the illustrious French Laundry, their vacation home base.
Now, Napa is the hot spot, and Yountville’s culinary scene struggles; several restaurants, including chef Thomas Keller’s Bouchon and the popular Bistro Jeanty, have cut weekday lunch service.
Keller closed La Calenda, his Mexican restaurant, in 2024, citing “a lack of local traffic” and opened a casual burger popup in its place.
“We went from Yountville being busy and vibrant to the pandemic, and now everything has changed,” Laz said.
For locals, the social club will be open every day — even Tuesdays, when many Yountville establishments are closed.
“Where do you send guests post-t, pre-dinner?
Where do we go post-work for a great bottle of wine?”
Laz asked.
“I don’t want to replace restaurants.
I want people to come here and then go to a restaurant.”
Laz acknowledged that private clubs can have a reputation for being pretentious and exclusive, but that’s not what she’s going for.
“Membership can sound really snotty,” she said.
“I see it as building a community.
I know that sounds super cheesy, but that’s really what it is.”
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