Monday Rerun 6: Italian winemakers, hit the bricks

December 2006.  Those were the days.  My teaching days were numbered -- I had less than a week before I closed the classroom door for Christmas break.  I never went back.  The world of wine was drawing me in, ever closer and irresistibly.  I was inspired by two men whose work had long been Italian wine.  I remain good friends with one today, although the other took offence at me and told me to FUCK OFF.  (Exact quote.)  La vita è così.

Enjoy.

December 19, 2006

Vignaioli italiani: Hit the bricks

The other day I wrote a post on the need for Italian winemakers to do wine evangelism in this huge, varied market that is known as the US of A.   To hit the bricks and press the flesh.  To get out there and educate the restaurateurs and retailers and consumers.  A hard job, no question.  A necessary one, no question.

I thought it was worth calling out two of the many excellent comments.  One is by The Italian Wine Guy, Alfonso Cevola. The other by an engaging young winegrower of the Tuscan Maremma, Gianpaolo Paglia, whose own efforts on behalf of his Poggio Argentiera's wines are tireless.

Both men tell the same basic story: if you want to succeed in the American market, get out there and tell your story again and again and again.  And be prepared for a whole lot of frustrations along the way.  These guys are worth listening to -- they're deep in the business and their experience is about as real-world as you can get. Plus they're pretty real themselves, good people.

Gianpaolo Paglia

Let's start with Alfonso''s comment:

Terenzio:
Thanks for laying this out. If anybody reads this and thinks I'm a glass half empty guy, please let me tell you, I'm not. I'm in the game for 30 years now, so the big picture is tempered by time and perspective. But, yes, Lizzy, people still need to hit the streets and pass by the accounts on a regular basis. Until he died, my friend Eugenio Spinozzi came to the US 3-4 times a year, and stayed for 21-40 days at a time, for 25 years. Ask Dino or Stefano Illuminati if they don’t miss his efforts, today.

Last week I sat with a general manager of a very upscale Italian restaurant. We were at a champagne luncheon. All through the luncheon he criticized French wines (our host) French foods ( what we were eating), saying they learned everything from the Italians. He criticized American food, saying all we were good for was buffalo and turkey and he hated both, along with the native Americans. He criticized Champagne producers (our hosts), saying the Trentino bubbly wines like Ferrari were better. In between the vitriol, he was taking breaks to go outside and smoke cigarettes. All the better to send him to a speedy finish to a life he seems to revile.

This is more common than rare. He doesn’t represent me, or you, or Lizzy. And his attack on French culture wont make the Italians shine by comparison. So we brought the fork to France. And we turned the heathens around Bordeaux into wine growers. But that was a very long time ago and not relevant to today.
But old guys like him live, and until folks like him pass away, they affect the perception of what we are trying to bring to light.

We need more ambassadors.. Here’s something I found a few years ago.

“L’Italia ha un grande tesoro: la sua arte e la sua fantasia.
Anche nella cucina abbiamo piu opere d’arte, che il resto
del mondo, a causa della nostra storia. Ma abbiamo anche un grande difetto: non abbiamo l’organizzazione per difendere, valorizzare, far conoscere i nostri tesori.

Ecco il grande compito per gli anni 2000: fornire alla ristorazione italiana nel mondo, a quelle imprese che sono le ambasciate della nostra cultura, gli strumenti
per diventare la piu grande, la piu importante, la piu apprezzata gastronomia del mondo.”

“Italy possesses a great treasure: its art and its imagination. Even in our cuisine we have more works of art than the rest of the world, because of our history. But we also have one big defect: we are not sufficiently organized to safeguard our treasures and make them known and appreciated.

That is the challenge of the year 2000: to provide the Italian restaurant business throughout the world, these companies which have become embassies of our culture, with the means to ensure that the Italian cuisine becomes the greatest, the most important and the most appreciated culinary tradition in the world.”

That is still my position (I did not write this) but I believe it needs CONSTANT VIGILANCE. This is a melting pot culture and more is melting into it day by day.
Reading about wine is good, tasting is good. And it is improving. But this is a battle for hearts and souls and that means the trenches and the streets. Daily. Constantly. Until further notice.

And here is Gianpaolo's contribution, from another perspective but in the same vein:

There isn't much to add to what have been said. I can only confirm that it's a long way to do to make people aware of what we are doing in Italy today, this last word being the operative word: today. Yes, because even us, the italians, have changed over the past 10 years in the way we drink, the way we think and produce the wine, so, how can we expect the people in the big wide world to know everythinh about us. And, why should they? Don't we have to deserve that attention that we are all seeking for?
We have to understand America if we want to sell wine there. We have been extremely, incredibly lucky so far, in the fact that italian food, italian cusine is so popular in the US, thank to those millions of immigrants (of whom we have forgot if we consider the way people look at immigrant in Italy today) that shed tears and blood to get their new life in that country (and many others). And because of this luck we tend to think that everything is granted, but it is not. The other night I was at dinner with Denis, the manager of Il Molino, in Las Vegas. This guy has been learning about italian wine for a decade, he has visited Italy nine times already, it spends hours on the internet to find something about a new wine that he has been asked by some customers. What did he had to say about his work? He said that he realised that the way the people make wine classes to the restaurant's stuff doesn't work 90 % of the time. Because they talk a lot about things like dry extract and similar, but they don't actually teach the stuff a way to sell the wines. That's how he does: he seats at the table with a watch and he asks the waiter to tell him in twenty seconds why he should choose a Morellino instead of a Chianti (for instance...). Does it sounds strange and a little bit unrefined to us? Well, that's the way it works for him, and he his the wine buying your wine.
What did I learn from this story? 1) be humble 2)work the road 3) work the road 4) work the road.
And the road is very long, it actually never ends, so we have better get started!

This can-do attitude is in direct contradiction to one of Gianpaolo's own blog entries, "Is Italy the land of layabouts?" Success to him and his (beautiful) partner, his wife Justine.

Thanks to both gentlemen for their eloquence and passion.   Italian wine couldn't have better advocates.

The other day I wrote a post on the need for Italian winemakers to do wine evangelism in this huge, varied market that is known as the US of A.   To hit the bricks and press the flesh.  To get out there and educate the restaurateurs and retailers and consumers.  A hard job, no question.  A necessary one, no question.

I thought it was worth calling out two of the many excellent comments.  One is by The Italian Wine Guy, Alfonso Cevola. The other by an engaging young winegrower of the Tuscan Maremma, Gianpaolo Paglia, whose own efforts on behalf of his Poggio Argentiera's wines are tireless.

Both men tell the same basic story: if you want to succeed in the American market, get out there and tell your story again and again and again.  And be prepared for a whole lot of frustrations along the way.  These guys are worth listening to -- they're deep in the business and their experience is about as real-world as you can get. Plus they're pretty real themselves, good people.

Gianpaolo Paglia

Let's start with Alfonso''s comment:

Terenzio:
Thanks for laying this out. If anybody reads this and thinks I'm a glass half empty guy, please let me tell you, I'm not. I'm in the game for 30 years now, so the big picture is tempered by time and perspective. But, yes, Lizzy, people still need to hit the streets and pass by the accounts on a regular basis. Until he died, my friend Eugenio Spinozzi came to the US 3-4 times a year, and stayed for 21-40 days at a time, for 25 years. Ask Dino or Stefano Illuminati if they don’t miss his efforts, today.

Last week I sat with a general manager of a very upscale Italian restaurant. We were at a champagne luncheon. All through the luncheon he criticized French wines (our host) French foods ( what we were eating), saying they learned everything from the Italians. He criticized American food, saying all we were good for was buffalo and turkey and he hated both, along with the native Americans. He criticized Champagne producers (our hosts), saying the Trentino bubbly wines like Ferrari were better. In between the vitriol, he was taking breaks to go outside and smoke cigarettes. All the better to send him to a speedy finish to a life he seems to revile.

This is more common than rare. He doesn’t represent me, or you, or Lizzy. And his attack on French culture wont make the Italians shine by comparison. So we brought the fork to France. And we turned the heathens around Bordeaux into wine growers. But that was a very long time ago and not relevant to today.
But old guys like him live, and until folks like him pass away, they affect the perception of what we are trying to bring to light.

We need more ambassadors.. Here’s something I found a few years ago.

“L’Italia ha un grande tesoro: la sua arte e la sua fantasia.
Anche nella cucina abbiamo piu opere d’arte, che il resto
del mondo, a causa della nostra storia. Ma abbiamo anche un grande difetto: non abbiamo l’organizzazione per difendere, valorizzare, far conoscere i nostri tesori.

Ecco il grande compito per gli anni 2000: fornire alla ristorazione italiana nel mondo, a quelle imprese che sono le ambasciate della nostra cultura, gli strumenti
per diventare la piu grande, la piu importante, la piu apprezzata gastronomia del mondo.”

“Italy possesses a great treasure: its art and its imagination. Even in our cuisine we have more works of art than the rest of the world, because of our history. But we also have one big defect: we are not sufficiently organized to safeguard our treasures and make them known and appreciated.

That is the challenge of the year 2000: to provide the Italian restaurant business throughout the world, these companies which have become embassies of our culture, with the means to ensure that the Italian cuisine becomes the greatest, the most important and the most appreciated culinary tradition in the world.”

That is still my position (I did not write this) but I believe it needs CONSTANT VIGILANCE. This is a melting pot culture and more is melting into it day by day.
Reading about wine is good, tasting is good. And it is improving. But this is a battle for hearts and souls and that means the trenches and the streets. Daily. Constantly. Until further notice.

And here is Gianpaolo's contribution, from another perspective but in the same vein:

There isn't much to add to what have been said. I can only confirm that it's a long way to do to make people aware of what we are doing in Italy today, this last word being the operative word: today. Yes, because even us, the italians, have changed over the past 10 years in the way we drink, the way we think and produce the wine, so, how can we expect the people in the big wide world to know everythinh about us. And, why should they? Don't we have to deserve that attention that we are all seeking for?
We have to understand America if we want to sell wine there. We have been extremely, incredibly lucky so far, in the fact that italian food, italian cusine is so popular in the US, thank to those millions of immigrants (of whom we have forgot if we consider the way people look at immigrant in Italy today) that shed tears and blood to get their new life in that country (and many others). And because of this luck we tend to think that everything is granted, but it is not. The other night I was at dinner with Denis, the manager of Il Molino, in Las Vegas. This guy has been learning about italian wine for a decade, he has visited Italy nine times already, it spends hours on the internet to find something about a new wine that he has been asked by some customers. What did he had to say about his work? He said that he realised that the way the people make wine classes to the restaurant's stuff doesn't work 90 % of the time. Because they talk a lot about things like dry extract and similar, but they don't actually teach the stuff a way to sell the wines. That's how he does: he seats at the table with a watch and he asks the waiter to tell him in twenty seconds why he should choose a Morellino instead of a Chianti (for instance...). Does it sounds strange and a little bit unrefined to us? Well, that's the way it works for him, and he his the wine buying your wine.
What did I learn from this story? 1) be humble 2)work the road 3) work the road 4) work the road.
And the road is very long, it actually never ends, so we have better get started!

This can-do attitude is in direct contradiction to one of Gianpaolo's own blog entries, "Is Italy the land of layabouts?" Success to him and his (beautiful) partner, his wife Justine.

Thanks to both gentlemen for their eloquence and passion.   Italian wine couldn't have better advocates.

Comments

[gianpaolo]

is it clear that I' not the one the used the F word? I'd have used something more italian instead.
Is it already two years Strappo?

[Strappo]

It wasn't you, GPP? Oh shit!!!!