We are Argaux

In honor of Small Business Week, we want to share the story of how we started our business. Our product is wine, but it’s our mission as a women-owned business, to inspire and connect people from all walks of life through food & wine. Wine is a catalyst for so much more than the glass in front of you. Paired with food, it brings people together around a table where ideas are born and connections are made. When that happens, anything is possible.?

Our Story?

It was never just about wine. Our story starts with friendship. We met in college and bonded over a passion for cooking, and a shared birthday. Our friendship grew over monthly dinner parties we co-hosted for friends (the same friends that would then give us the mashup name of ‘Argaux’). We were known as “dinner party enthusiasts'' and our appetite for all things food and cooking fostered a newfound interest in wine. Campus wine bars became our library where we pondered the possibilities and dreamt up a business plan for what started as a passion project, and is now a thriving business.?

7 years later, we are proud to be your partners in wine. Our team of sommeliers are consultative, thoughtful partners for any business looking for creative and productive ways to meet business goals through food and wine. We are an online wine shop with over 200 carefully curated bottles. We have a HQ office in Costa Mesa California along with a state of the art wine storage facility.? We create memorable wine tasting experiences for our clients, both in-person and virtually and help them find the perfect gift.

How We Source

For us, wine is about food and bringing people together around a table. It’s about relationships and honest conversation. And when it comes to sourcing, we take the same approach. We represent real wine, made by real people that take pride in their craft and are driven by quality and a sense of authenticity.

1. Transparency and a search for sustainability

At this point, many of you have heard buzz words around wine such as natural, organic, clean, and sulfite-free. But what does this all really mean? At the end of the day, the act of training vines to produce fruit the way we want is not “natural” and at this point our global industry relies heavily on petroleum and water. Our goal is to have a level of transparency with our winemakers and with our consumers about the state of the wine industry, our individual roles and responsibilities within it and our ongoing search for long-term sustainability. When it comes to choosing eco-conscious wines, lines can be blurry. Responsible farming is an umbrella for an assortment of different certifications and vineyard management styles. We are not so much focused on what certification a winery might have, but the key elements they are practicing to conserve water, reduce energy consumption, eliminate the use of toxic pesticides and herbicides and promote biodiversity in their vineyards. We are all searching for the right answer, and for us, the vineyard lays the groundwork and sets the expectation for cleaner winemaking, packaging and transportation from the vineyard to your doorstep.

2. Sense of Place

Better vineyard management isn't just the right thing to do, it also produces better quality grapes with greater flavor compounds and unique characteristics. As an education-focused company with a love for blind tasting, we put a lot of weight on a wine tasting like the environment it’s from.?

3. Classic in Style?

Typicity is something we look for in our wines. This goes hand in hand with sense of place. There is great history and tradition in winemaking and finding wines that embrace modern innovation with respect for tradition provide consistency and a form of identity for a region.?

4. Hidden Gem

We pride ourselves in finding wines that aren’t at your average grocery store. Our goal is to open up the world of wine to our consumers by finding grapes, regions or producers that are up and coming or hidden gems worth exploring.?

5. Woman Winemaker or Diverse Representation of Winemakers

As a female-owned and operated company in a male dominated industry, we love to support women winemakers carving their own path as well as other winemakers who are underrepresented in the industry. Sourcing good quality wines that meet our standards is important, and if there is a diverse winemaker at the helm we are all the more excited to support it.?

6. Food-Friendly?

When tasting wines for the shop, the conversation is always surrounded around the food we crave and recipes we want to make after taking a sip. Wine and food go hand in hand for us and we have no interest in associating with wine (or people) that don’t identify with that.?

We are grateful for everything we have learned these past 7 years as small business owners and continue to learn every day. Please continue to follow our journey at argaux.com and on Instagram.

Cheers!