NOT EVERY GREAT wine in Napa Valley can exclusively be found in a winery; quite a few of the best bottles are also sold in local wine shops. Not just any wine shops, mind you, but places whose proprietors know the valley inside and out. Stop in for a visit or, better yet, a tasting and these longtime Napa residents will fill you in on promising new producers as well as long-established superstars—offering in one sitting a broad sample of Napa wines that might otherwise require weeks to discover. Here are four merchants to consider for your next wine-country trip, and if you can’t make it to Napa, they’ll deliver (where legal) as well. the husband-and-wife proprietors of 750 Wines, are not only acquainted with every winemaker of note in Napa but seemingly every homeless horse, cat and dog. It’s not unusual to find animals from their Jameson Animal Rescue Ranch wandering around the St. Helena shop. On the day of my visit, it was a friendly pit bull named Gunner. “Why don’t you take her back to New York?”

More On Wine The Five Best Wine Books for Beginners The Inside Story Behind a Wine List’s Creation L’Avventura of Making Wine on a Volcano How Millennials Are Changing Wine Is Coffee More Complex Than Wine? Message in a Bottle Author Ann Hood on Michter’s 10 Year Single Barrel Bourbon Think You’re Over Pumpkin Spice? wine good company quotesTry This Beer Irish Author Colum McCann Taste-Tests a Japanese ‘Scotch’ Novelist J. Ryan Stradal: Must You Know Scotch Lingo to Enjoy a Single Malt?red wine age benefits Tucked away on a side street, 750 Wines functions a bit like a private club. wine on tap costAlthough bottles are available for sale, the shop is largely a tasting venue. best french wines to age

Tastings, which last 1½-2 hours, are free for up to six people. (Larger groups pay a fee.) Bookings should be made at least a month in advance, at which time would-be tasters will be asked to fill out a questionnaire about favorite wines and preferred varietals, price points—and music. This last item determines what songs, if any, will be played while you’re there. best wine selection dcBased on the other answers, the Stevenses will choose wines from their stock of limited-production bottles ranging in price from $19 to $225. good cheap wine for pizzaThe most commonly requested is Napa Cabernet, according to Mr. Stevens. Tasters are under no obligation to buy the wines, but given that many of the bottles offered here are hard to find anywhere else, most clients pick up a case or two. 1224 Adams St., Suite C, St. Helena; K. LAZ WINE COLLECTION Kerrin Laz, the 30-something owner of the new K. Laz Wine Collection, counts among her mentors the Stevenses and

a local vintner (Rudd Oakville Estate) who also owns a wide range of businesses, including, until last year, the Dean & Deluca grocery chain. “Everything that’s here is because of Dean & Deluca,” said Ms. Laz. As a wine buyer with the company for almost 10 years she was in contact with some of California’s top winemakers. When she was putting plans together for her new venture, Ms. Laz reached out to 75 Napa vintners about buying their wines. All responded in the affirmative—a big vote of confidence, as the region’s top winemakers are quite particular about where their bottles are sold. Like 750 Wines, K. Laz Wine Collection isn’t really about selling wine—bottles in the shop have no price tags—but about guided tastings. Ms. Laz offers three types: the Taster, the Artisan and the Cult. Each includes six wines from bottles costing between $40 and $635. Tasting prices range from $65 to $165 per person, depending on the caliber of the wines. Advance booking is required.

The Cult tasting I sampled on a recent visit included the 2012 Screaming Eagle Second Flight (the aforementioned $635 bottle) and, at the lower end, the 2013 Accendo Cellars Sauvignon Blanc ($54), made by famed winemaker Françoise Peschon. Other wines in the tasting included the 2012 Futo Oakville Estate Red ($335) and the 2012 Macauley Beckstoffer To Kalon Cabernet Sauvignon ($175), which was especially impressive. In addition to wines that few ordinary oenophiles might encounter, Ms. Laz offers a running commentary about the people and geography of Napa—an invaluable insider’s perspective. 6484 Washington St., Suite C, Yountville; ENOTECA WINE SHOP Margaux Singleton is a longtime Napa insider. A former talent scout from the dance world, she opened her Calistoga store in 1997 and has cultivated relationships with many of the region’s top winemakers, including fraternal superstars Luc and Thanks to such long-standing relationships, Ms. Singleton receives allotments of many hard-to-get Napa wines.

Screaming Eagle founding owner used to transfer cases of her cult wine into the trunk of Ms. Singleton’s car. Though Ms. Phillips has since sold the winery, Ms. Singleton still receives her bottles of Screaming Eagle—albeit more conventionally. ‘Many of the bottles offered at these local shops are hard to find anywhere else, so pick up a case or two.’ Enoteca is an eclectic shop. Each bottle is accompanied by a long description and/or tasting note that hangs from the shelf in a plastic sleeve. I’ve never seen so much verbiage in a wine store. There is also a good bit of memorabilia, including a Western saddle that Ms. Singleton bought from a customer who needed the money. “Every wine shop needs a saddle, right?” Ms. Singleton said with a laugh. The saddle sits at a point in the store that divides the everyday wines up front and the more expensive rare wines in the rear. Ms. Singleton doesn’t host tastings but she does have a mail-order wine club with monthly or quarterly shipments, starting at $25 a bottle.

Her offerings include a large selection of European wines. This is in part for the locals (“when winemakers hold blind tastings for staff, they shop here,” she said) and in part for herself. “I’m interested in wines from all over the world,” Ms. Singleton said. 1348-B Lincoln Ave., Calistoga; BOUNTY HUNTER & BACK ROOM WINES aka the Bounty Hunter, says he was one of the country’s first mail-order wine merchants, launching his business in 1994. Mr. Pope, who now owns a wine bar and barbecue restaurant in downtown Napa, still sends out some two million whimsical brown catalogs (think J. Peterman) a year. the shop caters both to locals looking for non-California wines (he has sizable French and Italian selections) and tourists seeking small-production Napa wines. Tastings are available for a modest fee. Meanwhile, Mr. Pope has big plans for the future of Napa. He’s designing a 27,000-square-foot food-and-wine emporium that’s expected to open in 2018. Excavation work is already under way.