Tony Terlato

Vintage man with the vintage plan
While I was interviewing him, Jonathan Winters broiled a steak and ate it, but didn’t share (it was the last steak in his freezer). The late Julia Child accepted my cooking tip (to make a soufflé, melt the chocolate in triple-strength coffee), but she never made the dish for me.
    Tony Terlato, wine distributor, importer and winery owner, is the first to make lunch for me while I interviewed him. It is a wonderful way to put a visiting reporter at ease. (Note to Michelle Pfeiffer, Cameron Diaz, George Clooney and all those who wish to borrow money from me: please follow his example.)
    Terlato, the youngest 70-ish person I have ever met, is a force of nature. He offers philosophical insights, conducts a wide-ranging taste of the wines he loves, reveals how to be successful in the wine business and gives tips about raising children willing to take over the family business. All the while, he mixes pasta sauce, hums along with the ever-present operatic arias and demonstrates how the good life should be lived in his kitchen in The Vintage in Indian Wells.
    His Terlato Wine Grop, now run by his sons, sells more than a third of all imported wines in America costing more that $14.
    Terlato is generally credited with being one of the few people in history to establish an entire wine category when he brought the Italian Pinot Grigio called Santa Margherita to America. This is roughly the equivalent of discovering that gold has more uses than filling teeth.
    Terlato began in the liquor business assisting his father in the family’s Chicago liquor store. Later he worked for his father–in-law’s bottling company. How many sons could actually work for both their father and father-in-law and find happiness?
    He turned Pacific Wine, his father-in-law’s bottling company, into a fine wine distributor. His discovery of Sicilian Gold, the sweet almond flavored desert wine, led Pacific to become an importer. Terlato also brought us Asti Spumante, the sparkling wine my mother loved above all others.
    While stirring the sauce, Terlato proudly insisted that I try one of his rosés. I warned him that, while I enjoyed his hospitality and would go along with his wishes, I was not a big fan of rosé. In fact, my usual reaction to rosé was to think seriously about flushing it.
    Then we sipped his Rutherford Hill Rosé of Merlot and it was delightful, doing a little soft shoe on my tongue and pleasing my eye.
    Terlato proclaimed, “This is not a Mickey Mouse, girly wine that goes around giggling in the afternoon. This is a serious wine that, if you tasted it blindfolded, you would not know it was a rosé.”
    Tony said, “There is a whole generation that drank Roditys, Mateus and Lancers and thought they were the only rosés. My grandson will ask, ‘what was Lancers?’”
    Then Terlato imagined the advertisement that would one day create his rosé rivival, “I picture a room where everything is white: There is a white couch, white walls and white lampshades. I see a beautiful blond wearing a white dress. She is holding up a glass of Rutherford Hill Rosé of Merlot because this wine is something special. And in 10 to 15 years this Rosé will be served in top restaurants.”
    Terlato’s success can be attributed to charm and the fact that he never quits. For instance, he romanced Angelo Gaja, a great contemporary Italian winemaker, for a quarter century before the seduction was complete. Every year for two-and-a-half decades, Terlato would travel to Italy, meet Gaja and ask, “Will this be the year that I represent you?” Each year, Terlato was politely rejected.
    Terlato remembers, “Four years ago, Angelo calls and says I am ready to change. I sent him a note saying, ‘It took me 25 years to get you.’ Angelo sent back a note asking, ‘Was it worth it?’ My note back to him had only one word, ‘Yes.’”
    Today Gaja’s wines have been described as “perhaps the finest Italian wines ever made.”

What’s up next?
In his home, in his kitchen, as the winter sun fills the house and Terlato is braising peppers, the Ultimate Wine Salesman is offering his next discovery: a white Greek wine. My response: Greek white wine is so beneath the radar that the Trojans refused to carry it with them into Troy inside the horse.
    But Terlato is pushing this white Greek wine as the Ionian version of Santa Margherita. So I taste Boutari Moschofilero even before I can pronounce it. It snuggles up to the clams and is a refreshing, much-more-than acceptable white wine.
    Terlato is plotting to have Moschofilero tastings, not in Greek restaurants, but in upscale French restaurants like Charlie Trotter’s in Chicago. After that, it will not be necessary to bring in the wine hidden in a wooden horse.
    As we sat on the patio eating pasta shaped like little purses, we tasted the Rutherford Hill 2001 Reserve Merlot, an amazing wine that became softer and more wonderful with each passing minute. I wanted to stay there for another 12 hours just to see how this
wine developed.
    I wanted to hear again the legend of Tony’s discovery of Santa Margherita, the Pinot Grigio that conquered America.
    Back in 1979, Italian white wines never fetched more that $3.98. They were not worthy of consideration when it came to quality.
    Terlato was looking for an Italian white wine that would be priced at the unheard-of $10 or more. He traveled to the Alto Adige region of Italy, went alone to a restaurant and ordered all 18 bottles of the Pinot Grigio on the list.
    The next day Tony went to the winery that made the best of the 18 bottles and in a short while he had the American rights to import Santa Margherita, which was then selling 600 cases a year only in New York. Today, Terlato brings in 500,000 cases of Santa Margherita a year!
    Tony also shares the story of how Michel Chapoutier, the esteemed French wine maker, became part of the Terlato operation.
    A friend insisted that Terlato visit the Chapoutier winery even though its reputation
had precipitously declined. The father’s wines were at best indifferent, but Tony thought the son Michel was ‘a genius.’ Instead of 15 minutes, Terlato spent the entire day and part of the night listening to Michel’s ideas about soil, vines, and wine.
    But the winery was on the verge of bankruptcy. Terlato decided that he would represent Chapoutier in the hopes that, when the son took over, the wines would improve.
    In 1989, Michel produced his first vintage. During a sales trip to America, Michel talked only about his wine, but said nothing about his father’s, which were still awaiting sale. When Terlato confronted Michel, asking why he never mentioned dad’s wines which Terlato had contracted to sell, Chapoutier said, “My father does not make good wines. I can’t lie and say they are good. As his son neither can I say they are bad.” Many American kids would probably say, ‘My father makes swill’ and push his own wines without reflecting on the feelings of the Old Man.
    Terlato understood Michel, they negotiated some price concessions, the father’s vintages were sold, and Michel Chapoutier became another Terlato convert. In the last three years, five of Chapoutier’s wines have gotten perfect scores and he is one of the most highly regarded winemakers in France.
    If you listen carefully to his stories, you quickly learn that Terlato distributes, imports and makes wine one friend at a time.
    After all, Terlato’s motto is, “Quality is the only thing that endures.” And that deserves a sincere toast.

©2005 by Desert Magazine.