Uncorking a Hit
Anthony Terlato, the man who introduced Americans
to pinot grigio, feels good about a new grape.
You don’t know it yet, but sometime soon – maybe this
summer, maybe next – you will stroll up to the bar in your favorite
elegant spot and, wanting something cool and refreshing, you will
gaze confidently at the bartender, and you will say, “Moschofilero.”
That you do not, at present, know how to pronounce this word – that you have not yet tasted this crisp, fruity white produced in
the gentle hills of Greece – is of no
importance. You will soon be quaffing
it. Anthony Terlato says so.
“It’s so easy to drink,” says Terlato. “If you give it to somebody who
doesn’t drink wine, they love it. It’s
clean, it’s fresh, it has floral citrus
– there’s just not anything not to like
about it.”
Terlato has a knack for knowing
what people will like, and he has built
his $185 million company, Terlato
Wine Group, on hunches just like this
one. About 25 years ago, for instance,
he had the notion that people would
like pinot grigio, and, leading with the
Santa Margherita brand, he became
the first U.S. importer to market that
varietal in quantity. Back then, stateside
drinkers consumed maybe 1,000 cases a year. Now there’s hardly
a party where it isn’t served; reckoning by last year’s 6.8 million
cases sold, it is, as Terlato says, “a category.” As a result of this and
other hits, Terlato, 70 this month, is considered to be one of the
most successful entrepreneurs in the wine industry and is known
as “the father of pinot grigio.”
From Tangley Oaks, the company’s lovingly restored 26,000-
square-foot Armour family mansion in Lake Bluff, Terlato presides
over a business that markets more than 35 percent of the imported wine costing over $14 a bottle sold in America – a
long way from his father’s small North Side wine store, where
he started minding the counter in 1955. Today, with the help of
Terlato’s two sons, Bill and John, the business markets more than
40 brands nationwide, and owns all or part of several wineries
in California (Napa’s Rutherford Hill and Chimney Rock, among
others), France and Australia.
Terlato doesn’t pound the
pavement the way he used to,
but he still builds his business by
getting food people interested in
his wines. He counts as one of his
earliest victories the success of
Sicilian Gold, a Marsala-based wine
with an almond flavor that at one
time sold 40,000 cases nationwide. “I convinced restaurant owners
to give it to their best customers
for free, as an after-dinner drink,”
Terlato says. “And then they would
see it in the stores.”
Chances are – and you heard
it here – you will soon be seeing
moschofilero (mos-ko-FEE-leh-roh)
somewhere near you. In 2002, some
2,000 cases of moschofilero were consumed in the United States – and most of that was being poured alongside flaming cheese
in Greek restaurants. In 2003, when Terlato’s Paterno Wines
International division started importing moschofilero, that number
rose above 20,000. And despite the sometimes poor reputation of
Greek wine – and the skepticism of industry observers – Terlato
thinks he can put the grape on the tip of your tongue. “Wine
people think this is impossible,” he says. “But it’s only impossible
until somebody does it.”
-David Zivan
©2004 by Chicago Magazine.
|
