Today we’d like to introduce you to Daisy Kwoh & Christine Meredith.
Hi Daisy Kwoh, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
Christine: The idea for Guildford Green came from my frustration with how wine is sold. Having spent my whole career in wine – restaurants, retail, and winery marketing, I saw shelves flooded with mass-produced wines that were overwhelming yet uninspiring. Finding small-batch, family-owned wines was nearly impossible, let alone truly natural wines that weren’t bogged down with additives.
I wanted to create a place people could trust – where wines tasted amazing and were made with integrity and care for the earth. The name ‘Guildford Green’ is personal, a place I spent many childhood summers, and it represents community and trust.
Daisy: For me it’s about connection. I came from the ad agency world working with lifestyle brands. I noticed in retail, wine often missed that genuine connection with consumers.
Christine and I met working for California wineries, clicked immediately, and realized natural winemakers were largely invisible on grocery shelves. It’s like the craft beer movement all over again—bringing authenticity and life back to a commercialized industry.
Christine: Yep, I left the winery in 2019 to design Guildford Green. I remember calling Daisy, and she was super enthusiastic about jumping in to help launch it. And what began as a brick-and-mortar idea became an online business during the pandemic. Now, five years later, Guildford Green is our farmer’s market for wine.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Daisy: Oh gosh, definitely not! We’ve had plenty of ‘near death’ moments, for sure.
Christine: During COVID, we launched a seasonal collection that was doing great – until we went to reorder and found no inventory. Our wines were stuck on a barge waiting to unload outside the Port of Los Angeles. With massive congestion and COVID-related delays, unloading could take up to 25 days. We had orders to fill and no idea when we’d get stock.
So we started scrambling, calling up every distributor we knew, trying to piece together inventory from anywhere we could in LA. It was super stressful – but also one of those moments where you just figure it out, because you have to.
Daisy: And remember Fall 2022? I’d just come back from maternity leave, and Christine was 6 months pregnant. We were both completely wiped! Exhausted, but determined, we drove to Big Bear for a one-day photo shoot. We styled everything perfectly for golden hour – and then we lost all the photos. Every single one. The memory card got corrupted somehow and when we tried to download the images, nothing showed up. Just… gone.
Christine: We were so defeated. But instead of scrapping the whole thing, we packed up the wines and drove around Beverly Hills looking for anything “fall”. It was 70 degrees and sunny, and we were trying to create a season that doesn’t really exist in LA. We were literally taking pictures of each other holding bottles next to red leaves on sidewalks and orange trees in front yards – just whatever we could find.
Daisy: Honestly, I think it kind of worked! The photos had this spontaneous, real-life charm that people really responded to. Anyway, now we’re obsessively backing up photos during every shoot. Lesson learned!
Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
Christine: At Guildford Green, we’re redefining wine shopping through a seasonal, thoughtful approach. Each collection features natural wines designed to pair with the flavors, moods, and occasions of the season – making wine discovery feel both intentional and exciting.
We specialize in natural wines—think organically or biodynamically farmed grapes, native fermentation, and zero synthetic additives. We’re working to be the first certified organic wine shop which helps support our mission. We work closely with small producers to understand how their wines are made and why they matter, so we can pass on those stories to our customers.
Daisy: As certified sommeliers, we focus on sharing a wine’s story while keeping it approachable and relatable. No intimidating lists of tasting notes – just friendly, vivid descriptions that make it feel like a recommendation from a trusted friend.
We also launched our podcast, Natural Pairing: A Podcast About Wine, to spotlight the culture, producers, and the messy, magical world behind natural wines.
What do you like best about our city? What do you like least?
Daisy: The city’s constant chaos is hard not to love – it’s this wild mix of neighborhoods, energy, and ambition – and it all works together. It’s totally inspiring. Everyone has a cool story, a quirky side hustle or my favorite is when you meet someone who’s a dancer-turned-software-engineer-turned-sourdough-baker kind of thing. Also the sunsets! You can see sunsets around the world, but LA’s are something else – especially in the fall and winter when you get that really pinkish-purple that scatters across the clouds. Maybe it’s just the smog and the marine layer all playing together, but it’s really stunning.
Christine: Okay, I love LA, but the parking situation has tested my soul. It’s like a citywide scavenger hunt – except the prize is a questionable yellow curb and you’re trying to determine if it’s presently ‘commercial hours.’ You’re late to dinner and you’re trying to interpret signs that were chaos-written by a poet like “No parking Monday 8 – 10am unless it’s the third Thursday and Mars is in retrograde.” On a lighter note, I’m excited about the Metro expansion to LAX and Waymo expanding their footprint because the Olympics are not far away and hopefully by then we can be teleporting around this city.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.guildfordgreen.com
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/guildfordgreenwine
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/guildfordgreen
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@GuildfordGreenWine
- Other: https://open.spotify.com/show/6CfWQw03JZl5tvz6fqwAAp
Image Credits
No credits needed. We own all the photos.
