Some More of the 17 Reasons The Wine Importer Likes Being a Wine Importer

Posted Monday, April 23rd 2001

8. Introducing Unknown Wines to an Unsuspecting Public -- When we first started, Minervois and Corbières were oddities. Alain Jungenet had a couple of estates and perhaps a few others were around. Now, they seem almost commonplace. What has been extremely gratifying for myself, Denyse and Kevin is to see wines from obscure appellations being drunk by wine lovers around the country. Bourgueil, Cheverny and Cour-Cheverny, wines from the Bugey, great Muscadets, high-priced Mâcons, Beaume-de-Venise Reds, Gaillac, Touraine whites reds....I think our firm has played a large role in the popularization of fine wines from these regions.

9. Popularizing Wines Without the Wine Press -- I don't have the popular wine palate that gets the big scores in the wine press. Sometimes it depresses me that we are not Bobby Kacher. But more often than not I am delighted to be buying and selling wines that have a purity and authenticity. Rather than finding wines for Parker, or wines for the Wine Spectator, or wines for the "American palate," we have found wines we love and found the people in the wine trade who can get them to a public that will appreciate them. With or without a shelf talker that has a 93 point score from a Parker review.

10. Meeting Like-Minded Geeks in the Wine Trade-- most importantly, there is Kevin McKenna, my partner along with Denyse Louis. Kevin was one of our first buyers, when he was the buyer at Astor Place in New York City. For six years now he has been an integral part of our firm, bringing a wide range of wine and business knowledge that Denyse and I have always lacked. There is David Lillie at Garnet Wines, the King of the Loire Valley, who helped us so much to get going and to keep moving in the Loire. JR Battipaglia at Garnet, whose commitments to our Burgundies was so essential to our stability and expansion. Steve Mosher at the Wine and Cheese Cask in Boston who has flooded the Boston market with too many obscurities from our book. Tom and Carol Piscatelli in San Francisco and all the work they has done for our wines. Eugene Kaplan in Dallas, Robert Yellin in DC, Frank Lichtenberg in Atlanta, Paul Roberts in Chicago.... Then there are all the sommeliers and retailers out there who have invested in maybe one or two of our wines, but without whom we would never have had wide distribution. There are also the great distributors like Roanoke Wines, Domaine Selections, Triage, Silenus, Slocum, Douglas Polaner and so many more who can sell wine as wine and not simply as commodity.

11. Meeting Like-Minded Geeks Not in the Trade -- there's a whole group I've met around Robert Callahan that coalesced around various internet wine forums and who can now be found at Robert Callahan's Wine therapy. Callahan is kind of in but not of the Wine Trade, so I best put him in this category. It has been not only gratifying to meet all these people but I've learned about Gruner Veltiner and so many other wines by spending time with many of these maniacal characters. I will never forget all the support I received from these friends during my heart surgery a year ago and I will never forget their generousity and kindness.

12. Brad Kane.

13. Discovering Chenin Blanc -- I do have a home in the Mâconnais and I suppose could have been happy just drinking Goyard and Jean Thevenet. But there is such a beautiful range of Chenin -- from dry Savenniéres to Vouvray and Montlouis Demi-Secs through Moëlleux onto the special bottlings of great vintages -- wines that uniquely express their terroir and that age superbly. Wines that are delicious young or at 80-years-old. Wines that go so well with so many different foods and have yet to be corrupted by gobs of new oak and over-extraction.

14. Discovering Cabernet Franc -- I do have a home in Southern Burgundy and I suppose I could have been happy just drinking Pinot Noir....

More to come....
- Joe Dressner 5-08-2001 5:18 pm