The participants were Susana Balbo in Argentina, Italian wine importer Gregory Smolik in Chicago, and the small shop Big Nose Full Body in Brooklyn’s Park Slope.

The reason I bring this up now is twofold. First, I have just transfered all the pieces over to this new site, posted to their original dates. You can find the lead-off piece here. And thanks to the new categories function, you can find all the pieces under The Real Wine World. The pieces now have space for your comments!

Second, I thought I should bring closure to the project. Everyone got busy and the project didn’t make it the whole year. Susana Balbo had further demands on her time as she became president of the Wines of Argentina trade association. Gregory Smolik’s career as an independent importer of boutique wines from Italy came to an end but he now brings his passion and knowledge to his new job at the importer Domaine Select. Big Nose Full Body is still lubricating the palates of Park Slopers with free tastings on Saturday afternoons and 15% case discounts every day.

Who knows, maybe we’ll try for a second season of the Real Wine World sometime?!

I called him on his cell phone and caught him in his distributor’s warehouse. The implosion related to a side business that he had been trying to set up to import larger volume wines from Italy that was going to be his cash cow. He was despondent.

“Forget a cash cow—I don’t even have a cash lamb at this point. It’s crazy.”

Such are the travails of trying to sell the indigenous grape varieties of Italy. Greg has high standards and only works with producers who are making wines that he describes as authentic or rustic. His portfolio consisted of just four producers but he has just had to let one go after finding some bottle to bottle variation and price increases. And the wine maker that I met at a lunch in August, Walter Fabbri, has left Basilium W to pursue his own wines. Greg supplies the winery’s popular Pipoli and I Portali wines to 200 retail and restaurant accounts so he hopes the winemaker maintains the high standards that he knew under Fabbri.

Greg’s wines include the Aglianico grape from Basilicata, Falanghina from Campania, and organic wines from Lombardy. A portfolio like this, while appealing to connoisseurs or wine geeks, can be tough to sell to a mainstream audience.

“My wines are too much of a hand sell. The market is not ready for that. Let’s talk about Santa Margherita Pinot Grigio at Olive Garden—they’re not drinking Aglianico. I hate to sell my soul but if I don’t sell something, I’m going down. Not a day goes by that I don’t think about becoming an organic farmer or going back to playing my trumpet,” he says.

“Everybody at school would have Nike; I wanted Addidas. I have never wanted what everybody else had…I just want to change people’s ideas about having to have Pinot Grigio at restaurants. Pinot Grigio 50 years ago was nothing. Tony Terlato [the American importer who built the Santa Margherita brand] was a marketing genius, like Madonna. I’m not shooting to be a multimillionaire, but I would like to get something screamingly successful.”

He may have to get some more mainstream varietals to make the business work. “Finding bulk wines is never a problem in Italy. Find the best possible bulk wines that can sell is more of a challenge. If I don’t do it, I wouldn’t be in business much longer.”

He thinks he has found a good candidate in a Montepulciano that can be available to retailers and restaurants for $6 a bottle, an attractive price point for restaurants to pour as a house wine or a wine by the glass. Montepulciano, with a long history and greater consumer awareness in the US, would be an easier sell. But it is entering a more competitive part of the market.

“There are so many wines out there. It really makes you despise the business aspect of it. I just love wine.”

Beyond the grave

Greg just got an unusual endorsement about the quality of his wines.

Greg recently got a call from Sam’s Wine saying that a customer wanted 18 bottles of Pipoli aglianico bianco and they were scrambling to fill it. Greg asked why one person wanted so many bottles of the wine and the reply came that a recently widowed woman was pouring the wine at her husband’s memorial service-at his request. In his will, the woman’s husband had specified that he wanted certain olive oils, cheeses and Pipoli bianco to be served. Greg asked if the couple had ever been to the winery and the answer was no. Greg was also out of stock on the wine and had to have some flown in from an out-of-state warehouse, such was his honor at the request.

As our call wrapped up, Greg is hoping for some more orders from the land of the living and returned to his work in the warehouse preparing samples for a trip to Las Vegas. His career may seem like a gamble to him at this point, but his passion, knowledge, contacts, experience and language ability all contribute to helping his odds.

* * *

To find Greg’s wines try Sam’s Wine and Spirits, which ships to many states or try wine-searcher to find them in IL, WI, or NV.

In the most recent updates, the wine shop has changed hands! I went to park Slope to meet the energetic new owner, Aaron Hans, and learn about his background, the transaction purchasing the shop, and his plans. In the latest from Greg, I joined him and winemaker Walter Fabbri from Basilicata for a lunch in Chicago.

Breaking news: on August 9th Patricia Savoie sold Big Nose, Full Body to Aaron Hans. Pat has decided to pursue wine writing full time. We will catch up with her later to hear from her directly. Meanwhile, I went to Park Slope to meet Aaron, new proprietor of the shop…

Aaron Hans is so bursting with ideas and energy that is small wonder that his close-cropped blond hair stands straight up. But this thirty-something new owner of Big Nose Full Body has plans to tweak the shop, not give it a wholesale makeover. The clever name, the exciting range of wines, the handsome interior space, and the free tastings on Saturdays will all stay the same. But there will be minor changes including staying open seven days a week and even adding some apparel items.

Perhaps the biggest change for Aaron personally is his commute. As a sales representative for Frederick Wildman’s wine distribution he had taken as many as 10 subway trains a day to visit his accounts, both restaurants and shops. BNFB was one of his accounts and when he learned that Pat was thinking about selling he made her an offer. The five block commute for this long-time resident of Park Slope was undoubtedly a factor in his thinking.

“I’ve always wanted to own something,” he told me yesterday in the shop. An early stint in restaurants followed by a stint at a wine bar confirmed to him that he didn’t want to include food in his business. The shop seemed a good fit from that perspective too.

“You’re not going to get rich but you get to do something you really, really enjoy. I’m not stuck in a cubicle all day,” he said.

The store stocks wines from Wildman and Aaron is familiar with those. He hasn’t tasted through all the wines in the shop yet but any new wines that he adds, he will taste. He added a wine from Ridge to the store already, one that he knows and likes. The store currently gets wine from 22 distributors and he doesn’t plan on adding any more. “That’s a lot already,” he says.

I wondered, how do you value a wine shop? Aaron explained that when he purchased the shop from Pat in early August, he paid one price for the business, one price for the inventory, and the rest was thrown in as “good will.” That included odds and ends in the shop such as the racking and the computer-and even the staff. Larry, the assistant manager who was within earshot, joked that that was a lot of good will. “The staff are all great and we have no plans for changes,” said Aaron smiling.

With the busy season kicking in, he will however be buying a new computer to speed up the bookkeeping the current sluggish computer and to help with checkout. Last Saturday evening, there was a line the entire length of the shop.

In order to cope with this busy last few months of the year, Aaron has added opening hours on Sunday. Originally it was 12-6 but he said the last two hours were very busy and he felt badly turning people away. So now the Sunday hours are 12-9. Aaron says that he could easily work 80 hours a week but has limited himself to five days a week in the shop. He has to spend some time with his wife and kids after all.

Kids are clearly on Aaron’s brain. He interrupts our talk at one point to help a woman with a stroller into the shop. Given the demographics of the neighborhood, Aaron will be working with a designer to introduce Big Nose Full Body t-shirts—and baby apparel such as onesies and toddler tees.

“Who knows maybe you’ll come back next year and we’ll be making all our money in t-shirts?” he said. It’s an exciting time for him with lots of opportunities. And yes, he has agreed to continue to participate in The Real Wine World. That’s good for us!

When I arrived at Convito Italiano on Chicago’s North Shore last week for a late lunch, the sun was pouring in on Greg Smolik and Walter Fabbri, winemaker at Basilium. Given Greg’s preference for “authentic” wines that reflect their growing environment, it’s no surprise that Walter, who was only on his second trip to the US, is stocky and jocular and speaks only fragmented English. He’s no Michel Rolland being chauffeured in a black Mercedes while consulting by cell phone to over 100 wineries around the globe. He is instead a product of his terroir as much as his wines.

Walter had flown in for Italian Night at Sam’s Wine and Spirits and Greg had been running him ragged ever since he touched down. The Italian Night was packed on Tuesday night, they had appointments around Chicago on Wednesday, Thursday they went to Madison, WI to visit some accounts, returning back to Chicago late on Thursday night. It’s small wonder we had a late lunch on Friday.

Greg and I had scheduled this lunch, our first face-to-face meeting, so that I could meet Walter as well as Lynda Jo Shlaes, wine director at Convito. Although it was a business meeting, the tone was clearly convivial as Greg declared Lynda Jo “like a sister” before she sat down to independently say that he’s “like a brother.”

Lynda Jo described Greg as having star-like qualities. “He’s the only importer or distributor who comes here to pour his wines and there’s a crowd.” She regularly has free wine tastings late on Friday afternoons and says that crowds mysteriously know when it’s Greg’s day and start appearing. I wondered if they had Greg-dar, similar to radar. “I ended up putting a small sign in the window but before that I’m not sure how they knew,” she confesses. “Maybe it was the meat.”

Greg, who loves pairing food with wine, admitted to bringing grilled meats for customers to try—after first tasting the wine alone. “I love it when people are amazed by what food pairing can do,” he admits.

“Greg can easily sell 10 cases of wine in one afternoon.” Lynda Jo said. Convito is not only a contemporary Italian restaurant that has been around for 25 years but also a shop selling Italian wines and gourmet foods to go.

For our lunch, Greg had brought two samples from Walter’s winery. Both the wines, called Pipoli 2003 and the I Portali 2003, are made entirely from the Aglianico grape. Aglianico has only recently come into its own starring role (admittedly off-Broadway for the moment) but once was used to illegally bulk up the wines of Brunello, Chianti and even the Rhone, Greg said. These wines come from the Basilicata in the arch of the boot that is Italy’s silhouette on the map.

Greg also wanted us to try the Pipoli Chiaro, a white wine from the red Aglianico grape, with the lunch. So Lynda Jo brought out a bottle from her stock and chilled it in an ice bucket filled with water, ice and salt (a trade secret). The Pipoli Chiaro 2004 (about $8 retail, Find this wine) looks clear in the glass but has the heft of a red wine. I had just seen the wine director of another store the previous day and she said that she was featuring the Pipoli Chiaro in her fall newsletter as an excellent white. I agreed. It’s a white wine that has a red wine personality, perfect for the transitional weather. Greg, always thinking about food pairings, suggested meat (pork), fish (bacala), and pasta with red sauce.

As our food arrived, panini for Greg and me, a salad for Lynda Jo, and grilled chicken for Walter, we moved on to the reds, starting with the Pipoli Rosso (about $9 retail, Find this wine). The most humble of Walter’s wines, it is still hand-harvested from 30 year old vines and is an excellent value at about $10 retail. It is medium bodied and is ready to drink. Greg recommends pork, lamb or pasta for the conventional or lentils or local hot peppers for a taste of rusticity.

We then moved on to the I Portali, which exhibited more heft and for about $12 retail (Find this wine), seemed the better value red to me. The volcanic soil of the Vulture growing region in Basilicata give this wine some mineral notes but the dark fruits and soft tannins give it a lot of depth and complexity. It’s aged for 10 months in large oak barrels and 4 months in small barrels.

Walter’s top wine, the Valle del Trono (about $20 retail, Find this wine), was not available for our lunch, but I’ve tasted it before and think that it tastes like a wine worth twice the price. Walter’s 2001 vintage made only 30,000 bottles of the wine, which used best grapes from the oldest vineyards. Harvested late on November 20, the grapes received 20 days of drying in the sun (akin to an Amarone), 60 days of fermentation, and 30 months of oak aging. This wine accounts for about a quarter of Basilium’s wines.

These wines are the ones that give Walter the most pleasure but Walter uses the rest of his large vineyards to pay the bills through the production mass market wines. He grows Pinot Grigio and Greco de Tufo to sell anonymously to large buyers in the UK.

Greg has great confidence in Walter’s winemaking capabilities. And after tasting through three of his wines, it’s easy to understand why.

We left Convito to head in our respective directions, which for Greg and Walter meant heading down the road to Evanston for their next appointment and then for Walter that evening, to O’Hare, and then home.

7 AM – Turn on computer, go through e-mails, make breakfast.
8:30 Calls may start from Italy with questions concerning current orders if any.
10:30-11:00 – Organize the day’s events if in town
11:30 -12:00 – Go to Bensenville, IL warehouse to pick up samples and look at inventories.
At this point if my colleague Debbie is in we can go over label approvals, stock, new distributors etc.

12:45 Another quick call from Italy
1:30 – 2:00 Quick lunch
3:00 First appt
4:30 Second appt (same wines usually)
5:30 Third and last appt – depending on if I am driving or walking the city and if I’m in the suburbs makes a difference.
7:00 Dinner meeting with colleagues or doing a tasting.
9:30 Back home on computer check e-mails
10:30 – 11:00 I will leave the computer but I usually get up at some point during the night because I forgot to e-mail or check something.

WHEN IN ITALY:
6am Wake get a quick bite and start driving to first appt:
8am Arrive at first appt sample wines talk logistics.
9:30am Drive to next appt
11am Arrive at 2nd appt taste wines have lunch at 12:30 1pm with owner or winemaker.
2:30 Start to next appt, phone all next days appointments to confirm.
6pm Arrive at appt sit down sample wines may or may not have dinner with winery.
9pm Find a hotel if one is not already reserved.
10-10:30 Go over the day’s events organize all paperwork, etc then organize the next day’s events.

Go back to The Real Wine World home page to view other segments. Send in your questions or see Greg’s previous installment or see his next installment with Basilium winemaker Walter Fabbri.

When Ed Lehrman goes to Mendoza, he stays in a hotel for half the normal tourist price. How? He lets one of his local producers make the hotel bookings for him. That’s one of the tricks of the trade Ed has learned over the past five years as he has established his company as one of the strongest importers of Argentine wines to the US.

In 1999, Ed went on a fateful journey to Argentina. He had just sold his wine retail business and decided to join one of his distributors, Nick Ramkowsky, on a trip to South America. Although they only spent five days in Argentina and neither spoke much Spanish, they were so impressed by what they saw and tasted that they decided to go into business together and start importing the wines of Argentina to the US.

Ed tasted 3,000 wines a year in his retail business, a company for mail order wine, and Nick tasted a lot too. But when they were sampling in Mendoza, “He looked at me and I looked at him, and we agreed that this is far different from wines we know as Argentine—we have to do something about this,” Ed recalled on the phone last week from his office in Sausalito, CA.

“Susana’s wines were the ones that made the biggest mark. Here was a very talented wine maker whose wines weren’t being exported.”

“Argentina in late 1990s was similar to Napa in late 1970s since people were just developing a sense of their own brands and what they had to achieve. They still are today. Really only since 1994 have they been making quality wines for export,” Ed said.

It was a hard time to make quality wine at all. There wasn’t much domestic demand for it despite the fact that Argentina has one of the highest per capita consumption rates in the world. “The Argentine consumer doesn’t have tradition of paying up. Susana stuck to high quality. Thus the benefit for her was to go to the export market and show what she can do,” Ed said.

With their knowledge of the US market and its quirks, as well as packaging and sales, Ed and Nick set up Vine Connections and started importing the wines of Argentina. Armed with color printouts of their labels, and samples of their 12 wines, they started knocking on doors to set up a distributor network from scratch. They met with tremendous enthusiasm and acceptance even though the wines were priced aggressively for a relatively unknown country starting at $22 for the BenMarco Malbec and going up to $50 retail. “Price points weren’t as tough as they are today,” Ed said.

Today VineConnections has a presence in 45 states. His portfolio of wines now is almost entirely dedicated to the wines of Argentina since Ed says that as an importer “it is increasingly difficult to be a generalist.” The Vine Connections portfolio also includes the wines of Ernesto and Laura Catena, Tikal and Luca respectively, both the children of Argentine wine pioneer, Nicolas Catena. And they are also importers of several dozen premium sakes from Japan.

Ed describes Dominio del Plata, the winery that Susana built with her husband Pedro, as more comfortable and homey than other, more luxurious wineries. They built it right among their vineyards and also included a residential space in the winery so from their dining room windows, you can see the fermentation tanks. And it’s location on the way to the pass through the Andes to Chile, makes it very convenient. It’s small wonder that one thing on Susana’s plate for the next year is thinking how to better handle tourism requests.

Single vineyard wines are more risky in Argentina than they are in other parts of the wine world because of the risk of a snap hail storm, which can decimate a crop in 15 minutes. He cited staggering figures of a 13% annual loss rate of the total Mendoza grape crop over the last 20 years. Thus producers tend to source their grapes from several growing sites to diversify the risk. And they also resort to hail netting and even cannons, whose blasts are thought to break up hail squalls.

Despite this hail risk, which is manageable, Ed does not envy his fellow wine importers who import wines from France and Italy. “From a business standpoint, I’m not sure I would want to face the vagaries of the weather. The climate in Mendoza is similar to California. There certainly is vintage variation. Overall if you look at the consistency and quality you can achieve, it is great. We thought about the downside and there was very little.”

Snow, of all natural factors, has played a role in their business recently. To ship their wines to the US, Ed and Nick use the port of San Antonio, Chile. Getting there from Mendoza, trucks laden with the wine of Susana and their other producers must bypass Aconcagua, the highest mountain in the Western Hempisphere, and scale the Uspallata pass at 12,500 feet. In the summer, climbing this height takes only a few tanks of gas but is no great obstacle. However, now, when it is winter down under, it has become a bottleneck.

“It’s been hard to even find containers to fill,” Ed laments because the traffic has been so backed up this winter because of the tremendous snowfall. Normally, the pass can close for a day or two in the winter but this winter it has been closed for up to two weeks at a time. Nonetheless, ships departing every two weeks means that they don’t have to wait for a boat once they clear the Andes.

Once the wines arrive in the US, the Vine Connections team is on the road selling the wines. Ed says that he travels less than Nick since he has two children but he is still on the road about 100 days a year. Nick has been shouldering as many as 280 days a year on the road, though he will be pulling back with the hiring of new sales staff bringing their national total up to seven. It’s important for Ed and Nick that their sales staff feel the same enthusiasm for Argentina that they do so all of the staff have been there to experience it first-hand.

Ed and Nick were drawn to Argentina in 1999 by the wines but in 2002 many others were drawn by the currency collapse. “When we went from the first time, we thought we had found the Holy Grail, to make good wine consistently, and we thought we could have the place to ourselves for quite a while. But now Argentina is so much on the map and the number of foreigners who have moved in has been phenomenal. No major wine growing country is without some sort of presence,” Ed said. “I’m stunned that it took the world this long to find out.”

Located in Campania, above the Bay of Naples and on the flanks of Mt. Vesuvius, DeFalco is one of four wine producers in Greg’s Sauvage Selections portfolio. DeFalco, the former vineyard manager of the critically acclaimed Feudi di San Gregorio, makes both red and white wines from the Lacryma Christi del Vesuvio DOC.

This trip to see DeFalco was particularly fun for Greg since his wife Nell was able to tag along. This week-long trip, primarily to go to a family wedding but also to see DeFalco, was the first one that Nell went on since Greg started the business. “Usually he’s so booked with appointments, driving eight hours a day, and racing around without a day of rest—that it doesn’t make for a vacation at all,” Nell wrote me last week.

“It’s great to be able to visit the wineries with Nell,” Greg told me on the phone from the O’Hare international terminal. “Obviously the hardest thing about being on the road is being without her but since she helps me with the catalogue writing and images, I always love it when she can come with me to get a sense of the place herself.” Sampling the fresh regional foods together can’t be bad either as they shared a meal of sardines, two different types of clams, mussels, and local aliche with DeFalco overlooking the bay.

DeFalco left Feudi to pursue his own authentic winemaking style Greg said. Although Feudi is known for having put the local, indigenous varietals such as the white Falanghina and the red Aglianico on the wine world’s radar screen (Robert Parker gave Feudi’s $65 Serpico 2001 Aglianico 98 points), when they turned to pursue a winemaking style that produced bigger, more oak-driven wines DeFalco no longer felt comfortable. Now Greg buys most of the wine that he makes for export to the US.

“The Feudi white (Falanghina) does not have a sense of place. The DeFalco white is lighter and has notes of peach that go great with fish. The Feudi rocks the fish,” Greg summarized.

American consumers will be able to taste more of the wines this year. Greg said that the DeFalco labels had gotten final approval from the US authorities, which meant that a container of their wines could now ship. “Hopefully we can get a container out of Italy in the next couple of weeks before the country shuts down for August. Then it would arrive here in Chicago in October and be available for the holidays,” Greg eagerly reported.

Consumers will await them with baited breath—and tongues. Ten days after his return, Greg led consumers through a tasting dinner of DeFalco wines. At the recently opened Night Café in Arlington Heights, IL, Greg had them taste the white, and they approved. Then Greg had them try an olive or take a bit of salt on their tongues and then taste the wines again. “Everybody said ‘holy crap! I had no idea that food could do that to a wine!’”

DeFalco might be the producer closest to Smolik if in name only since his mother’s maiden name is DeFalco. Although he family came from Sicily, where the spelling is DiFalco, they switched to the Campania spelling of DeFalco for ease of pronunciation in America. Greg grew up speaking Italian with his mother and visiting her relatives in Sicily every summer.

Greg was headed to Sicily on Friday when I reached him at O’Hare. He’s going to be in Italy working on a new, complimentary business. He has just gotten financing for a new line of wines that he is going to import under the Cantina della Passione name. They will be accessible selections of barbera, chianti, and Pinot Grigio with a focus on quality. “I have restaurant owners telling me ‘I’ll never be able to sell Aglianico Bianco in the suburbs, Greg.’ So this new line is wine is for them: quality, accessible and higher volumes.”

“I’ve never felt so liberated in my life. I can do esoteric stuff with Sauvage Selections. Then I can also have mainstream wines in other line,” Greg cheerfully stated as they called his flight over the loudspeaker.

When I walked into Big Nose Fully Body on a warm summer day last week there were three new wines on the counter: a Greek white, a French rosé, and a Lebanese red. That about sums up the diversity at this charming neighborhood shop.

If I were a movie reviewer, I’d give the shop two thumbs up, way up. Or if I were Robert Parker, I’d give it a 95. By any rating system this shop scores high. I would love to have this shop right around the corner from my house.

The shop doesn’t have an enormous selection but it does have a great selection. And with almost as many different wines as there are days in the year, and conveniently located near the F line subway station, locals should consider this their own cave. Moreover, the wines are not only ready to drink but they are priced to drink. Only a few champagnes seemed to crack the $25 mark (but there were even some sparklers for under $10).

Pat does not buy her wines from an importer such as Greg nor does she buy them directly from a producer such as Susana. Instead, she buys them from about 25 distributors who act as intermediaries between the producers and the retailers. Although she works with a couple of big distributors such as Lauber, she works mostly with smaller distributors who have niche specializations or smaller, more focused “books” as their portfolios are known in the trade.

For example, she recently had a wine from California at a restaurant and inquired about who was the distributor, hoping to get it for her shop. She learned that it was distributed by Angels Share in Brooklyn and since that’s the location of her shop, she thought it would be a snap. But in the end the distributor didn’t have a listed phone number so she put it on the back burner. A few days later, she got a call from one of the two principals at Angels Share asking if he could be of assistance.

In the end, the California wine was too expensive for her shop, but Angels Share also had some Spanish wines that she liked (including the Castillo de Fuendalejon, the bottle in the bag, which I purchased at the shop and review as my wine of the week this week).

Wine distributors in New York state offer discounts for larger orders, Pat explained to me. They quite often offer a price for one case, but then discount that by about five percent if she takes three cases. Five, ten and 25 case orders all get steeper discounts but those are rare for Pat’s small shop. The shop’s temperature controlled basement stores some wine inventory that Larry, the assistant manager, keeps assiduously arranged.

But even though it is a small shop trading on a convenient location and knowledgeable staff, the prices are still good. Pat says that sometimes she wants to stock a wine that is too expensive, she will offer at a lower price than the normal markup. And she sometimes scrounges the distributors’ lists to find any interesting wines they may be trying to move and offers those at reduced prices as well.

The distributors come and pour their wines for her to sample at the shop. If she wanted, she says that she could have as many as three a day visiting her, each pouring five or six wines. While this might be reason enough alone for some entrepreneurs to purchase a wine shop, Pat says she tries to keep them at bay until she has a gap to fill. “I taste every wine that is in the shop,” Pat said.

Since she is also a wine writer, she writes up her impressions of a wine and hangs a tag in front of each bottle. Parker scores? Not in this shop. “Scores won’t tell the customer whether the wine will go with chicken salad for lunch,” she said.

The shop’s window display (and street scene in reflection!)

Oddly enough, given her background at IBM in e-commerce, Pat never really thought about selling wine through the web. “There’s just not enough space for shipping boxes,” she explained. “Occasionally our email newsletters get forwarded and we get requests, which we try to honor, but it is logistically difficult.”

About five percent of sales are rosé wines in the summer and white wines climb to parity with reds. Before I trundled off to the coffee shop next door, Pat suggested a few summer picks:

* Routas, rosé, 2004, province, $9.
* Castello de Bossi, 2001, $16 (closeout)
* Pierre Boniface, white, vin de Savoie (of course!), $12
* Notios, Pelopennisis, 2004 (white) – just in, as yet unpriced.

Pat, a veteran of several large corporations including McKinsey, Nabisco, Cablevision and most recently IBM, specialized in strategy and marketing in her corporate life and contributed to IBM’s shift toward consulting and away from hardware. Ultimately, after several restructurings of the e-commerce consulting group, Pat was let go on September 10, 2001. She didn’t think her life could get any worse.

The trauma that New York and America felt that September left Pat doing some soul searching. She decided, as many Americans did after that fall, to pursue her passion. In this case wine had brought her much joy throughout her life. She and her former husband had joined several wine tasting groups in the 1970s and had even co-authored a book together, The Wine Tasting Course (1978).

A friend asked her to collaborate on an article for Wine Enthusiast and Pat started to think more about wine and writing. She then wrote two stories for Wine Business Monthly. But as her severance started to reach its end, she started to think more about cash flow as well as wine. Glancing through the New York Times business opportunities listings, she saw a wine shop for sale in Brooklyn. She thought, why not?

Two months later the shop was hers. The witty name and the décor of vivid blue walls and pressed tin ceiling are thanks to the original owners, a thirty-something Canadian couple who returned to Canada when they sold the shop.

But Pat has changed almost all the wines stocked in the shop, filling the store with the wines she likes, mostly from off the beaten path. The store will not have every wine from a given region, but it will have a few wines from almost any region, including Pinotage from South Africa, wines from Turkey and Slovenia, and a 100% Xarelo white from Spain.

“We have breadth not depth,” Pat told me on the phone recently. She currently has between 300-350 different wines, which makes for a lot of wine per square inch given that the shop is a mere 400 square feet (37 square meters). And with 80 wines under $10, free tastings on Saturdays, and occasional $5 bottles, it is a good place for readers of DrVino.com.

This selection and the service that Pat and her knowledgeable staff provide have led to a glowing write-up in the New York Sun, the Village Voice called the shop “the best neighborhood wine shop” in November 2004, and Saveur declared it their “favorite wine shop name bar none” in January 2005. “Now people in Manhattan may say ‘oh I’ve heard of that shop,’” Pat proudly proclaims.

Pat particularly likes two aspects of owning the shop: the customers and the opportunity to taste. The neighborhood feel means “we almost always have a baby stroller in the shop.” When a customer comes back to the shop and says “the wine was perfect,” she could not be more pleased. And being a good New York shop, they also deliver—free in the immediate neighborhood and for a fee elsewhere.

Being a shop owner means that wine distributors come and parade their wines in front of her on a regular basis. As a member of the trade, she also attends the numerous trade tastings in New York, always trying new wines. “My wine knowledge has increased a lot in the past two years,” she says.

But with the shop open until 9PM on weeknights and during the day on Saturday, Pat finds it difficult to keep up her wine writing—not to mention her social life.

I look forward to talking with Pat in the coming year about consumer preferences, labels, the role of critics and shelf-talkers, and wines off the beaten path among other subjects. I also look forward to watching her in action at a trade tasting. Should be fun stuff. Check back regularly.

www.bignosefullbody.com

During his six years as Italian wine buyer at Sam’s Greg presided over one of the largest selections of Italian wine under one roof. Sam’s had one 25,000 square foot store on the north side of Chicago with about 9,500 different wines in stock when Greg left (they have added a suburban location since then), so this is no corner shop. Greg built the Italian wine portfolio from 350 wines to about 2000 through several buying trips to Italy.

Greg was most excited about introducing new wines to consumers. He found many small scale producers in Italy, arranged to have them imported and sold at Sam’s. Some of these wines are no longer around but others have grown to multi-million dollars in sales.

Having visited numerous wineries, talked with hundreds of producers and sold wine to legions of customers, the transition to importer was an easy one. Greg knew what kind of wines he wanted to have in his portfolio and what kinds of labels would appeal to American consumers. “I didn’t want to have corporate wine that says ‘made in Italy’ but could really have been made anywhere. I care about where wine comes from, not a tank or a barrel. I have a story to tell and there’s a lot of passion behind that story,” Greg told me on the phone last week.

Fans of the big and oaky wines known as “super Tuscans” will be disappointed as rustic authenticity best summarizes what Greg looks for in a wine. He only works with family-run wineries in four regions of Italy: Lombardy, Campania, Basilicata, and Calabria. One of his producers, Cabanon is biodynamic. “I seek wines with the least amount of altering of the grape and the soil.” He describes his wines as “clean but expressive.” The wines in his portfolio retail in the $7 -$25 price range. Amazingly, he imports only about 1,200 cases of wine a year from four producers, but is looking to scale up.

An amateur musician, Greg also says that he is artistic and enjoys designing labels. But the bureaucratic side can be frustrating, as label approvals from the government authorities can take months. “I’m just starting out and can’t afford lawyers to rush them through,” he laments. “Label approval alone gives me gray hair.”

His wines are mainly available in Chicago, but he has recently picked up distribution in Nevada and Wisconsin. (Greg sells his wines to distributors who then sell them to retailers. His Illinois distributor, Maverick, has provided financial backing for him as well as a sales team.) Given his view that Chicago is “the most competitive wine market in the country,” he has cut his teeth on the hardest location and laid a good base for his expansion. He plans to add a dozen states over the next year including New York, Florida and Texas.

He is a passionate cook and the only thing he likes better than finding the right wine is finding the right food. The crisp white Falanghina paired with greens sautéed in garlic and olive oil, the fruity red Aglianico with the salt of veal—these are pairings that elevate the food and the wine, and drive him to keep finding good wines.

His wines have appeared not only in the leading shops in Chicago but also in some leading restaurants. Alinea, a cutting-edge new restaurant from chef Grant Achatz with a 25 course tasting menu, has included Greg’s I Portali wine with the squab. “A perfect match,” Greg declares with satisfaction.

In the next year, I look forward to seeing Greg in action, as he sells his wines, talking with him about logistics and labels, the financial side of the importing, and how he finds new producers for his portfolio. He’s off to Sicily and Campania for a week so we’ll check in with him when he gets back. Stay tuned!

What would you like to know about Greg? Send in your questions.

Greg currently has no website. That’s something on his plate for the near future.

> 6/30: Question from Terry in New York
I am fascinated with Greg Smolik’s venture, as I am now writing for the Italian wine blog Aristide and plan to help the owner of the blog do an English-language version based here in NYC. My main question for Greg (now): where does he think the US market for vitigni autoctoni (indigenous Italian varieties) will be in 5 years?

> 7/1: Greg’s reply
(Great timing for this question) What’s happening is a resurgence and/or a realization that good old fashioned wholesome quality can not only be attainable but that consumers are becoming more educated and particular in food AND wine especially in the U.S. where there is the drive to be authentic. Statistics prove that Americans love to travel especially to Italy and take as much of it in as they can, Appreciation for the culture, the uniqueness of the wines and confidence in themselves as far as pairing food and wine are all ways that can help me describe why I think indigenous wines will prosper in the next five years. I see indigenous or traditional flavors in wines catching up to all the great chefs who have been making food this way for some time, after all its not the presentation its the quality that goes into food and wine that makes someone come back, but I’m being wordy, I don’t think these types of wines will double in the next five years due to the fact that there are just so many Italian wines out there also there are too many financially powerful, over-marketed wines that leave the market bloated but I do believe that they have certainly taken root and will prove themselves as people are understanding more and more about the nuances and the essence of tradition, culture and genuinity.

It was 25 degrees (-6C) in Mendoza on the morning that I reached Susana Balbo by phone last week. Nestled in the foothills of the Andes, the vineyard was dotted with workers pruning the vines down to stumps she said. But the winery itself was in its annual hibernation as the grapes were harvested two months ago and the wines were quietly fermenting.

Although she and her husband, Pedro Marchevsky, started making their own wines in 1999, it wasn’t until 2001 that their striking winery, Dominio del Plata, which Susana designed, opened for making her three lines of wines. The wines include Malbec, Argentina’s signature grape, as well as more unusual offerings including Syrah-Bonarda, a rosé from Malbec, and the white Torrontés. They range from about $10 to $35 retail in the US and can be found in 17 countries.

Export markets have been essential for Susana since the concept stage of the winery. Her first winery, a short-lived venture in the early nineties, targeted the large domestic market in Argentina. Since then, exporting has become not only easier but essential. For example, when the Argentine peso collapsed in 2002 losing 75 percent of its value against the dollar, wineries with strong exports profiles actually saw their sales rise in peso terms (see my backgrounder).

A graduate in enology in 1981, Susana honed her winemaking skills during nine years in the Cafayate province. She returned to Mendoza in 1990 and refined her export skills as export manager during the mid-to-late nineties at Catena, one of the locomotives of the Argentine wine industry. She also designed the new Catena winery, a useful base for later designing her own. And she also met her husband there, since Pedro was the long-time vineyard manager at Catena, and the two were married in 1995. But they both left Catena to pursue their own winery together.

Susana is careful to draw on her experience at Catena but not the contacts that she made there. Her American exporter, Vine Connections, is a different importer than Catena’s American importer, an important point for Susana. She also maintains different importers in Europe than Catena. “All professionals want their own boats, to be their own captain,” she says.
The popularity of the wines abroad is having ramifications at home. In one way, Susana is starting to see more demand from the domestic market. As Argentines travel abroad again now that the economy is on a firmer footing, they are seeing her wines overseas and then come home and look for them. Further, foreign consumers are increasingly traveling to Argentina and the winery gets many calls for visits, but can hardly accommodate any of them. That’s something that Susana would like to work on more in the next year.

She also aims to do more experimentation in the vineyard. The 25 acres of vines are managed according to sustainable agriculture practices. But the real wild card in grape growing in Mendoza is the risk of hail storms that can erupt without warning just before harvest time, pound the plump grapes, and leave the vineyard owner with no crop. Thus Susana is trying strategic placements of nets of various colors and densities.

The winery is a family affair with Susana making the wines, while Pedro and his son manage the vineyards. Pedro’s daughter-in-law is an artist and designs all the labels. Susana’s son is currently a student at the University of California at Davis, the premier school for winemaking and viticulture in the US. One of the wines is called “Crios,” which means offspring and the label depicts two small hands in a big one symbolizing Susana and her two (now grown) children.

Susana is headed to Davis to visit her son and then take some time relaxing on the beach in northern Brazil. We’ll check in with her American importer next month. Over the coming year, I’ll talk with Susana more about the making and selling of wine and hopefully meet up with her in Argentina or America to see her doing one of the two.

www.dominiodelplata.com.ar

New York, NY – What does it take to be a wine producer? Or an importer? Or a retailer? Discover the inside scoop through a “year in the life of” three accomplished wine industry professionals. The new initiative, The Real Wine World, launches today on DrVino.com.

Taking a page from the reality TV playbook, the project will track three industry participants for a year. Susana Balbo makes wines in Mendoza, Argentina. Gregory Smolik of Chicago imports artisan Italian wines. And Patricia Savoie, owner of Big Nose, Full Body, who sells wines from all over the world at its neighborhood location in Brooklyn, NY.

Over the course of the year, the project will track the participants as they make or sell wine. They will offer insight into the industry, whether on technical winemaking questions or what works for selling wine. Further, the two non-producers will serve as an example of how to start-up professionally in the wine industry without owning or working at a winery.

The project is conceived and written by Tyler Colman (Ph.D., Northwestern). Colman is working on a book about the politics of wine in France and America. As a freelance wine writer with articles in consumer and trade publications, he writes about the business and politics of wine. He currently teaches classes on wine and politics at both University of Chicago and New York University.

What does it take to be a wine producer? Or an importer? Or a retailer? Discover the inside scoop through “a year in the life of” three accomplished wine industry professionals. In this space, we will track one year of making and selling wine in three different parts of the world and watch how they do their business and overcome challenges.

From Argentina, Susana Balbo brings 25 years of winemaking experience to her wines in Mendoza. She and her husband, Pedro Marchevsky, the vineyard manager, started their winery in 1999. The practice sustainable agriculture and export 90 percent of their wines to 17 countries. The winery is currently running near its capacity so how the manage their production, and the increasing number of tourists the wines attract, are key challenges for the coming year.

Susana Balbo, Making wine in Mendoza 6/29/05

In America, Gergory Smolik started his own wine importing company in Chicago in January 2004. He imports wines from four regions of Italy all from family-run wineries that produce only limited amounts of wine each year. Smolik believes in rustic authenticity. Prior to starting his own business, Greg was the Italian wine buyer for six years at Sam’s Wines in Chicago. In the coming year, he expects to grow his list of producing wineries and expand the availabillity of his wines in the US.

Gregory Smolik, Importing artisanal wines from Italy 6/29/05

Big Nose, Full Body is a wine shop in the Park Slope area of Brooklyn, NY. The shop is celebrating its fifth anniversary this year; Patricia Savoie, the current owner, purchased the shop two years ago. Since then it has won various accolades as well as a loyal following in the neighborhood. The small, smart shop stocks around 350 wines from around the world mainly in the $8 – $15 price range. With wines from off the beaten path places such as Turkey and California Charbono, Pat says “we have good breadth, not depth” to describe her store’s offering.

Patricia Savoie, Selling the wines of the world, 6/29/05