Six months ago, Kristen Muir of Capistrano Beach embarked on a journey to begin her new business focusing on wine, a venture she has been interested in since college. Now the owner of Caleb & Rose Wine Company, Muir is hoping to continue to grow in her local communities of Dana Point and San Clemente.
“ I am from this area originally,” Muir said. “But I serendipitously ended up stumbling into the wine industry at a very young age. I went to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, which is in wine country, and I studied abroad in Italy my third year.”
While in Italy, Muir spent much of her time absorbing the local culture surrounding wine, including how farmers of the many grape vineyards took special care of crafting their wines. When she returned to the U.S., she started a career in importing.
“The first wine festival I ever went to was in Italy, and it was really neat. It was just farmers standing behind a table pouring wine,” Muir said. “These families had been producing wine for generations, and there was so much history and culture in the wine, and I just thought it was such a beautiful experience.
“When I came back, I just felt like I wanted to learn more, and life took me on this really interesting path. My husband was an Air Force pilot, and we ended up living in New Jersey and New York, which I didn’t realize at the time was the best import market in the U.S. I ended up working for a wine importer at 23 and got my advanced certificate in wine out of New York. I quickly climbed the ladder and became a national sales director for imports from Chile, Italy, Spain, and France.”
With so much knowledge in the wine business and importing specialty bottles, she noticed a lack of them in stores, since many did not have the budget to advertise and market them in the United States.
“Many really small wine producers don’t have marketing budgets to promote themselves. So, people like me tell their story. My husband and I lived with the Air Force in Germany for three years, where I traveled to all these European wineries,” Muir said. “We moved back to Orange County five years ago, and I realized that just going to barbecues and hanging out with friends, everybody was drinking wine from the grocery store, which is mass-produced and has many additives.
“I wanted to be able to tell these smaller farm wineries’ stories and introduce people to really good wine. Having a background in wine, I also knew that I could get a wine license from the State of California to operate online and create a wine club. I started collaborating with local businesses, and it’s been a successful and fantastic way to connect with the community in an unforeseen way.”
With this in mind, Muir created her online wine club to offer a choice of thousands of family-owned, small-production, sustainably produced wines that are kept under the radar.
“ I do the club four times a year and curate the selections based on the season and what you might be eating,” Muir said. “I believe in wine with food, which has to be the philosophy I stand for, which is more attention to the craft with small production and minimal intervention with the land and grapes.
“For my spring club, there are three white wines and three red wines. All of them are unique grape varietals. It’s a bit red-heavy in the fall and winter, so there were four reds, one sparkling, and one white wine for the winter selection. And then, in the summer, I’ll include a rosé.”
Her club offers those quarterly deliveries in March, June, September, and December. Each shipment comes with the choice of three bottles at $90 or six bottles at $170. The growth in her club members has recently skyrocketed due to local business pop-ups and collaborations.
“ I started about six months ago, and I’m trending towards 60 to a hundred club members. It has been incredible how the community has come together,” Muir said. “I’ve realized I’m like this combination of a milkman slash wine fairy like from back in the day. Wine can be such an intimidating category to people, and so what I was realizing is that a lot of people just abort, and they don’t branch out of what they are used to; they’re paralyzed by choice. I am able to curate and help pick bottles that my customers will like based on a price point outside of the selected wine club picks.”
While she focuses on connecting with the local community, she also offers nationwide shipping with signature confirmation. She believes that a bottle of wine is just one step toward connecting with more faces and learning more about the local people in Dana Point and San Clemente.
“ I always want to be local-focused. I offer nationwide shipping because I was and still am an Air Force spouse,” Muir said. “So I have friends that live all over the country. But if I’m being honest, 95 percent of my business will always be in South Orange County. I want this to be something that connects this community, and when we sit down over a bottle of wine, it forces us all to relax, connect more, and put our phones down. I love this community and how much we support local businesses. So that’s what I care about and stand for.”
While caring for the community, Muir also focuses on donations toward a cause. She is currently a leader of Las Palmas Elementary School’s Uniform Exchange. As a Title 1 school, many of the kids are lacking in resources. The uniform exchange provides gently used uniforms for those in need. While making some local deliveries of wine, she also would be more than happy to pick up new shoes, jackets, gently used shirts (navy, red, white), or gently used navy bottoms.
Outside of that, she also focuses on other local charities that directly benefit kids in South Orange County.
For now, Muir is focusing on continuing to work with local businesses to promote the wine club and growing her customer base.
“ I would love to continue expanding. I’ve already collaborated with HŌM Dana Point and a few other businesses through pop-up events,” Muir said. “Eventually, down the road, I would love to have a wine-tasting bar and be able to reach customers face-to-face consistently. But for now, I really love being able to promote other local businesses.
“I love being able to plug in with other businesses and have my own wine club right now without a brick-and-mortar commitment. My kids are still pretty young, so it’s been really amazing to find something that I can do where I’m available to my kids and their sports at young ages.”
For more information about Caleb & Rose Wine Company and to join the wine club, visit calebandrose.com.