Life of a Wine Importer
It’s 3AM and I’m stealing wifi outside of a hotel in Florence so I can punch orders before 5PM in Colorado. Most of my memories sound like that for the first seven years of Volio. “The glory of travel” met squarely with “learning the hard way” as I tried to build my business. Trips with customers were incredible, but seven straight days of tasting, dining, and driving all over Europe can be a deep burn.
Covid provided ample time for my wife Angela and I to reflect on the trips we’ve enjoyed with friends and customers over the years; dreaming of a return to that reality with the stark realization that it will never be the same. Angela is from just outside of Treviso in the heart of the Veneto region of Italy, so any chance to get back to her country was a welcome retreat from the culture shock of her first few years in the US.
Those trips in the early years of Volio were so incredibly energizing. I remember one afternoon we were outside a small lake town on the border of Tuscany and Umbria as we were making our way to Montalcino from Montefalco. We had stopped for lunch and, typical of my lunches in Italy, I won’t look at the quality of the menu so much as the quality of the wine list to determine where I’ll post up for an hour or so to eat. We got lucky to find a place along the lake with a great view and a terrific list of wines I’d never heard of. I proceeded to order more wine than food, hoping to discover something super fresh in acidity, native in varietals, and white wine.
As luck, or the law of probabilities, would have it, I stumbled onto something interesting. Like any reasonable idiot I asked my wife if she wanted to get lost in the Italian countryside chasing down a winery I’d never heard of without any real idea of where it could be. These were the days I loved…phones weren’t that smart and GPS was called a “TomTom” by Italians, but it couldn’t help you find anything except a highway. If you knew your destination, you printed directions at home before you left and hoped to God you could read street signs fast enough to make the right turn.
The waiter told us he thought the winery was just outside of Montepulciano, a little over an hour away, so logically we headed that way. We pulled into Montepulciano, walked into the historic Caffe Poliziano and began to ask locals if they knew of a winery we’d been told might be from one of three towns within 30 minutes of theirs. With no real luck, we decided to start knocking on doors and headed to Pienza, and finally Torrita di Siena where we discovered a small DOC of 12 wineries, one of which was the golden goose I was looking for.
Tired of driving, but happy to have discovered a new region, we pulled into the long driveway straddling the steep hillside that held the town above it. As the driveway opened up we discovered the breathtaking valley looking out to Cortona several miles away with the foreground of ten beautiful hectares of vineyards and a stone house. We were lucky to find the owners at home and they welcomed us in to taste through their range of wines. Ultimately, I discovered that the wine we’d enjoyed at lunch was a fortunate bottle and the rest of their wines just didn’t match up.
Even if there wasn’t a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow this time, I’d never wander through Italy a different way. I look forward to another day in the car with Angela, hoping for that next great meal or stumbling upon the next “best wine you’ve never heard of.”
Isn’t that the job of a wine importer? To share the story of discovery; to connect us with the vineyard experience? I fell in love with stories about wine before I fell in love with wine, and now I’m the lucky one who gets to tell the stories, too.
I’m coming into Frankfurt now, and the flight attendant has kindly asked me to stow away the computer. One more connection and I’ll touch down in Italy, grab an espresso, and head out to the hills once more to take as many forks in the road as Italy can offer.
By: Charles Lazzara
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