Uncorked (8 page)

In our store, we see reps on Wednesday afternoons and the staff tastes together. When the eager salespeople pile up in the front of the store trailed by their bottle-filled bags, the shop starts to look like the waiting room of a regional airport.

The first sales rep I remember meeting was Armando Arroyo, a former sommelier at the New York restaurant Daniel and star salesman for Michael Skurnik, a fine wine distributor, whose brands include the noted Barbaresco producer Moccagatta and the cult California winemaker Peter Michael. As he rested his hand on my shoulder, Armando talked with ease about the legendary names in his portfolio. He lined up a dozen bottles to “taste through,” as they say in the trade. There was a Selbach-Oster Riesling (a quintessential German wine from one of the finest producers in the Mosel Valley) and a Vincent Dampt Chablis (an equally classic French Burgundy from the latest generation of a storied family). Despite the offhand presentation, both wines were carefully culled middle-range offerings from
well-regarded vintners. All the while, Armando spoke with the ease of someone who had known me for years. I later discovered that reps typically start with their simplest and lightest wines and finish with something phenomenal and way beyond the shop owner’s price range. In this case, it was a La Spinetta Barbaresco 1997, a blockbuster Italian red from a stellar year priced at approximately $200. “And why don’t you keep this to drink tonight?” he suggested.

The next day, I was nervous to meet our rep from Southern Wine & Spirits, the nation’s largest distributor, which had just barreled into the New York City market. Southern had consistently expanded and then dominated each new market. It grew from a one-man shop in 1968 to a national powerhouse representing over five thousand brands in thirty-eight states. Even before it came to New York in 2004, Southern was selling $5.5 billion of wine and liquor per year.

This time they had expanded not just to seize an opportunity but, apparently, to settle a score. A few years earlier, Charmer Sunbelt, the biggest New York–based distributor, had allegedly violated a gentleman’s agreement by opening a distributorship in Florida, Southern’s home turf. According to a former sales manager for one of Southern’s fine wine divisions, the move was due to Charles Merinoff, the overreaching son of Charmer CEO Herman Merinoff, who could not resist the temptation to expand their empire. “That kid could fuck up a wet dream,” the pinkie-ringed former manager told me. Southern, also run by a father-and-son team, Harvey and Wayne Chaplin, purportedly saw betrayal.

For the next two years, the manager averred, Southern plotted revenge. They studied the New York market. They identified the
best salespeople, the proven brands, and the key accounts. Then, in 2004, they pounced. According to a lawsuit filed by Charmer in 2005, Southern quickly made off with twenty-five key employees, supposedly even going so far as to offer a $5 million signing bonus to one particularly valuable recruit. In quick succession, Southern also acquired the exclusive regional distribution rights to such cash-cow brands as Absolut vodka and Plymouth gin. They followed by picking up a prestigious wine importer, Lauber. In describing their New York arrival,
Wine Business Monthly
said Southern “steamrolled” into the market with “military precision.” The New York wine and spirits business had not seen such upheaval since Prohibition.

Instead of Darth Vader, in walked Matt Moriarty, the soft-spoken Southern salesman with tousled hair. Wearing a toolarge suit, Matt, it turned out, was a French wine fan who made custom guitars in his spare time. From his wheelie bag, he wowed us with selections from two superstar Italian producers: Silvio Jermann and Feudi di San Gregorio. Hardly what you would expect from the Evil Empire.

Scion of a Friulian vineyard founded in 1881, Jermann revolutionized the wines from that northeastern Italian region best known for its lean white wines. Fond of inventive blends, Jermann resurrected long-forgotten native varietals such as Pignolo (literally, “fussy,” which seems apt given its reputation for low and uneven yields) and Malvasia Istriana (a local variety from Istria, a peninsula east of Trieste that Italians still rue having ceded after World War II) to create dense, complex wines. Like a mad scientist, the reclusive Jermann is reputed to be so enamored of the alchemy of winemaking that he is rarely seen outside the vineyard. The names Jermann gives to the family wines have only
cemented his idiosyncratic reputation. “Were Dreams” is what he calls one of his most famous whites. The title is a nod to the U2 song—Jermann is a big fan—“Where the Streets Have No Name.” Rich, pure, and fanatically well made, Jermann’s wines are among the most expensive and sought-after Italian whites.

For those who associate southern Italian reds with cheap and cheerful, Feudi San Gregorio is a similar revelation. Gregorio is famous for coaxing Aglianico, a southern Italian grape varietal that can be bitter and recalcitrant, to produce powerful and mysterious reds that are as impressive as Jermann’s bewitching whites. These are also not cheap wines. We happily ordered both wines on offer.

For months, Matt came to our shop weekly, whereas most of the other reps dropped by once a month. I was always charmed by his knowledgeable but self-effacing manner. He was always very prepared, yet with a surprise, and never pushed anything in a jug. Only later did I figure out that Janet had encouraged his frequent visits because she had a crush on him.

In reality, the Charmer reps were scarier. They had some brand-name wines, but Charmer’s bread and butter was booze. Their salespeople were interchangeable guys named Vinnie touting specials on blueberry-flavored vodka. Invariably, they showed up unannounced to “move product.” “You gotta try this stuff,” they said. “Awesome!” “Whoa, talk about a Jell-O shot!” Rather than gifting 2005 bottles of Vieux Telegraphe, the storied French Rhône wine from a legendary year, these guys forked over fistfuls of airline-sized sample bottles “fuh laytah.”

The worst thing I ever tasted came from a two-man band of Argentinean entrepreneurs. The duo offered Chilean and Argentinean wines in a market awash in mass-market South American
Malbecs, an often bitter French varietal. Explosively popular in the last five years, Argentinean Malbecs tend to be plush wines with deep colors, intense fruit flavors, and velvety textures. With imports up over 60 percent in 2008, these inexpensive and unsophisticated crowd-pleasers are available through big distributors. To sip most Malbecs is to be charmed by a South American playboy’s stories, only to realize that he really has only one lovely anecdote repeated over and over again.

South America has a reputation for blockbuster wines: robust reds and oaky whites. The gregariousness of those wines is due in part to the warm climate, which makes for big, ripe grapes, and in part to what they perceive as American demand for heavy-handed flavors. Rarely would you mistake a Chilean white for a Grüner Veltliner, the light Austrian wine.

Although Victor, the front man, hawked like a guy eager to move merchandise falling off the back of a truck, he also promised something that no one else had: a crisp, refreshing white that he tantalizingly described as a “South American Sancerre.”

“Ju are going to luf this,” Victor promised as he flashed the bottle. What he then so proudly uncorked was a Torrontés, a white varietal indigenous to Argentina that just happens to be my least favorite grape of all time. To date, I have never tasted a Torrontés that I would want to have on my table or at my shop. I took a fat swish. The world’s foulest wine tasted like acetone flavored with grape SweeTart. I never before spit with such authority.

On a slow afternoon, a polite twentysomething woman with what my mom would call a “heaving bosom” strolled in and poured glass after glass directly in front of her revealing blouse. As she talked, I tried to ask smart questions, staring intently at the price
list. A few days later, another rep poured an entire lineup in front of a bursting boob backdrop. By the time I met the husky-voiced blonde with the plunging neckline, I was starting to feel self-conscious. “Don’t look,” I told myself, only to find myself hypnotized by her cleavage magnified through the half-filled glasses. Over the following months, even more of these well-spoken and well-endowed reps showed up. If the typecasting hadn’t been so consistent, it would have been hard to believe. What made these sexy sales calls all the more confusing is that the tight-shirted sales staff was spread among some of the best distributors in the business. “Do the world’s most prestigious wines,” I asked myself, “really sell better framed between a woman’s breasts?” Sure seems like they do.

A few months after our initial visit, Armando, the salesman who had given me that $200 bottle of Barbaresco, returned, this time introducing us to a shy Piedmontese winemaker, Fabio Burlotto. The latest generation to take the helm of one of the oldest-school Barolo producers, Fabio filled us in on the two-hundred-year-old family business that had been the favored supplier to the former king of Italy but never managed to make the cover of
Wine Spectator
. Fabio kept his head down, and so I hardly noticed his wall eye. Trying to catch his gaze, all I could see were his Hermès sneakers.

Armando, in contrast, was beaming. He had a trophy vintner whom he had no doubt been dragging from retailer to retailer. These “work-withs,” I have discovered, are about as fun for the producers as dental surgery. The winemakers are forced to hawk their wares, numbingly repeating the same polished anecdotes. These chestnuts inevitably include a touching moment with a
grandfather walking through the vineyards as a child or a more salacious one with a girlfriend (who later becomes a wife) among the same vines. Then the rep hands over the price sheet and gives the buyer (me) the “So?” look.

Fabio clearly knew the drill and wanted it to be painless and quick. He dutifully laid out a line of bottles featuring old-fashioned black script over white labels. Elegant, understated, humble. Just like the winemaker himself. Our first taste was of a local and lesser-known varietal called Pelaverga.

“Virgin skin,” Armando added lasciviously, providing a loose translation.

In spite of Armando’s leering, the wine was delicate and mysterious. It rewarded attention by unfolding as you let it linger on your tongue. I am sure we also tasted some of Fabio’s blockbuster Barolos that day, but what I remember most clearly is his quiet wine made from a heretofore unheard of varietal.

Other winemakers followed, towed by eager sales reps. None had quite as much impact as Stephane Tissot. “I’m not going to imagine you naked,” I repeated to myself as Tissot walked into our store, one of the most ardent adherents of biodynamic winemaking, rumored to pick all his grapes in the buff. But as a relative newbie to the wine world, I was keen on hearing more about the cutting-edge viticultural techniques practiced by this well-known French producer, who runs the family domaine in the foothills of the Alps with his wife, Bénédicte. And here he was standing in the back of my new wineshop with a grinning rep by his side.

In the last few years, the market for biodynamic wines has skyrocketed. In Pasanella & Son’s first year, we had had only
one inquiry about biodynamic wines. Now we field at least one question a day. When new customers come to the store, I now see them scanning the labels and letting out satisfied “hmmms” when they see the “bio” symbol. Our current bestselling white, an Austrian Grüner Veltliner, is biodynamic.

The popularity of these seemingly über-green wines is not limited to independent shops in New York. National chains have reported similar spikes. The
Minneapolis Star-Tribune
calls the sales growth of these wines “explosive.” The ever-prescient Berrys’ recently launched a wine blog,
Wine Matters
, devoted entirely to biodynamic wines.

Even before this streaking vintner made the scene, I was familiar with the eccentric wines traditionally made in Tissot’s area, the Arbois. Although only fifty miles southeast from the famed Burgundy vineyards of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, the Arbois is best known for
vin jaune
(literally “yellow wine”). This sherry-like white couldn’t be further from the foresty and mysterious Pinot Noirs and crisp yet full Chardonnays for which Burgundy is famous. Made from a local varietal called Savagnin, vin jaune is created by putting the freshly pressed juice in small barrels that are then left to age. Unlike most wine, which is topped off in the barrel as it evaporates, the barrels containing future vin jaune are left to produce
voiles
(“veils”). This putrid-looking film is what gives the wine its distinctive—and some would say repulsive—taste: nutty and rich but at times disconcertingly similar to that jug of Pinot Grigio you left open a few months ago next to the stove. Even the bottle, a 620-milliliter (ml) flask called a
clavelin
(versus the normal 750-ml bottle used worldwide), screams “Vive la difference!” I can appreciate vin jaune, and I like it in small doses, preferably accompanied by a
strong local Jura cheese such as Comté. But I respect this quirky creation more than I enjoy it.

Tissot’s family has been in the Arbois for six generations, and one could imagine his weirdness is hardwired. Yet Stephane, mild-mannered, balding, wearing a check shirt and wire-rimmed glasses, didn’t look like a kook. When I asked about it, Tissot said that biodynamics was about thinking of the farm as a “living organism.” You cannot make great wines, he continued, without great soil. Recently, Stephane contended, there has been an overreliance on using technology to rescue inferior fruit. There are a lot of processes used in winemaking that can boost the flavor (“pumping,” by which the newly pressed juice is recirculated in vats to intensify the fermentation process), soften the bitterness (“malolactic fermentation,” which breaks down malic acid by adding another fermentation), or, when all else fails, make it as “buttery” as possible to hide a wine’s flaws (stick some oak chips in the barrel). Biodynamic winemakers, he explained, eschew chemicals and prefer to work their fields by hand. When he spoke of “crop rotation,” “sustainable farming,” “cover crops,” and “natural yeasts,” he had me nodding in agreement. According to the movement’s official certifying organization, called Demeter, biodynamic farming produces one of the smallest carbon footprints of any agricultural method.