For instance, I have a spread sheet on my cholesterol numbers going back to the mid 1980’s. And a list of all the foreign trips I have taken to Italy and elsewhere. I also have a spreadsheet which tells me what I have in my freezer. A list of my watches. A list of valuable coins I’ve inherited (watches and coins are vaulted up, folks). I have a spread sheet of the wines I have collected, so I can access any wine I want within seconds. Ditto for my vinyl LP and CD collection. You never know when one will want to spin Steely Dan’s Aja or Moondog’s Snaketime Series.
I also have a secret spreadsheet, which catalogs all the Italian wine I sold, as a salesman, a sales manager, an import regional manager, a portfolio manager or as an executive director. Wine that passed through our warehouses, which I had a hand in. I didn’t realize just how much wine had passed through. Or how much money. Not that the numbers are the reason for doing a life in wine.
But they do represent some things. The family that was young and growing, and are now in their fourth generation in Tuscany. The winemaker who took a risk and expanded his vineyards. Now his kid drives Defenders and wears Submariners.
The co-op that literally raised people out of poverty, and their wine, which came to America, was part of that. And I was privileged to help them, my people. My tribe.
They’re wild numbers. I don’t even know if I should reveal them. I mean, I’m out of the business now. They’re not top secrets.
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| My first end-cap - Illuminati wines - Simon David, Dallas, 1985 |
Much of the wine sold for under $20 retail, and represented the top four classifications in terms of volume РPinot Grigio, Moscato, Chianti and Prosecco. Reds outnumbered whites. Ros̩ wines started off slow but in the final 5 years or so, they made great headway. Prosecco and Moscato had meteoric rises. But over the years, the steadfast and predictable wines, Barbera, Montepulciano, Nebbiolo, Chianti Classico, they carried the water up the hill. They were the wines that fed the restaurants their by-the-glass offerings. They whet the appetite for Italian wine in the palates of Americans, who were witnessing the gradual process of intermixing of Mediterranean culture with the American. Pasta, truffles, salumi, espresso - drip by drip - Italy worked her way into the hearts and onto the tables of Americans. And salespeople fed that hunger, that thirst for more.
Salespeople get slammed with any number of invectives and slurs. There will always be the naysayers, people who live to air their grievances and attach shame and blame to a (safer) external source. Sure, there are salespeople, who will do anything for a sale or a buck. But it always goes back to the farm and the family, in my world in Italian wine. It’s always about the farmer, their vines, their toil, their art, their craft, their children, their loves. And salespeople, in a more perfect world, are their transmitters.
So, how did we do in 38 years? Well just a tad over, 63,000,000
bottles passed through on my watch, representing three quarters of a billion
dollars in wholesale sales. In retail sales, that’s $1.1 billion.That's a lot of dreams.
Mind you, there are freight forwarders, and vineyard workers and warehouse and delivery people and billing and customs folks, behind desks, all contributing to this number. Not just the sales people. And the clients who bought and bought again, over the years. And the end-users, people like you and me, who went to the store or the restaurant and bought or ordered wine, over and over again. And restaurateurs and retail folks who never stopped doing what they do - keeping the wine flowing from Italy to America.
Pretty wonderful ride, wasn’t it?