Ep. 1732 Spreading The Italian Wine Gospel | Masterclass US Wine Market With Juliana Colangelo

The Italian wine podcast is the community driven platform for Italian winegeeks around the world. Support the show by donating at italian wine podcast dot com. Donate five or more Euros, and we'll send you a copy of our latest book, my Italian Great Geek journal. Absolutely free. To get your free copy of my Italian GreatGeek journal, click support us at italian wine podcast dot com, or wherever you get your pots. Welcome to Mastercost US Market with me, Juliana Colangelo. This show has been designed to demystify the US market for Italian wineries through interviews of experts in sales and distribution, social media, communications, and so much more. We will quiz each of our esteemed guests at the end of each episode to solidify the lessons that we've learned. So sharpen your pencils, get out your notebooks, and join us each week to learn more about the US market. Hi, everybody. Thanks for coming. I am Juliana Colangelo. I am a vice president at Calangelo Partners and also a host on the Italian wine podcast. I am very honored to be here today to present our guests Shelley Lindgren. I'm gonna introduce Shelley with a quote from Letty Tig, the wine writer for the Wall Street Journal. Great wine cities are the work of great wine professionals. San Francisco is one of the world's great wine cities, and Shelley Lindgren helped make it so. I might only add Shelley helped make San Francisco a great wine city for Italian wine specifically. Over the past thirty years, Shelley has channeled her deep seated appreciation for Italy into an award winning career in wine. In two thousand four, she opened a sixteen in San Francisco, a neighborhood restaurant inspired by the cooking of Compania and highlighting Italian wine around the region with an emphasis on the south, and to quote another well known American wine writer as sir Mobley of the San Francisco Chronicles. Lingren was not the first sommelier to create an Italian wine list like this, but her restaurant helped give shape to the genre at the same time as its style of food, the produce driven pizza and salad model. We've seen the style of eating and the Italian wine list that have followed throughout the country. Now, since Shelley opened A sixteen in two thousand and four. Shelley's love of Italian wine has expanded into book writing. Her first book A sixteen Food and Wine was published in two thousand and eight, and in two thousand and twelve, She co authored her second book, SPQR. And just this summer, she released her third book Italian Wine, The History Region grapes of an iconic wine country. You can see her book also at the book corner, at ten fifty five just after this. Shelley's love and passion for Italian wine is infectious. And we're really excited to talk to her today about how we inspire the next generation of Somoges around Italian wine. We've talked a lot about consumers, but We all know for imported wine, especially that the Salmoyais are our first gatekeeper and our first audience in many ways. So with that, I'm gonna turn over to Shelley to introduce herself and talk a little bit more about her book. Hi, everyone. Thank you so much for coming today. And also can't tell you what joy it is for me to be back in Italy. And, I feel like I'm home when I come here. I feel so welcome, and everybody's always very hospitable. And, thank you, Juliana. That was quite an introduction. You know, for me and for the life we live in wine and food and hospitality, you always feel like your work is never done. And there's always so much to do So for me, it's really truly an honor to be here and to be speaking about something that I feel has, really shaped my whole professional career. It's been my passion. For my adult life. And I've been, working in restaurants and had the ability to meet so many winemakers. Welcome them into our restaurant. We visited every region multiple times. You know, this quest of knowledge and the depth that history of, Italian wine goes is much deeper than as young as the country is today. I coauthored these books. I just had to tell you a little bit about what led up to it. But Kate Lehi, who is, an a sixteen alum, and many of you here might know a few a sixteen alum because we've been open for almost twenty years in February. And I can hardly believe that actually. But, you know, I'm a, I'm from California. So I am from multiple generations back in California, and people always ask me, what's your favorite region in Italy? And I can never answer because I cannot pick one. I really do love the country. I love the diversity of the regions. At eight sixteen, we ended up focusing on the south of Italy. It didn't always start off that way for the wine program. Because I actually was completely a blank slate, and I knew the beautiful regions of Piedmont, Tuscany, Vanato, and I read and book about Vermentino from Sardinia. And there was some wine from Mount Aetna, but I never had had it then. And when we opened in two thousand and four, I found one. It was the Coetanera, was my, our very first Aetna rosso. And then Paso Picaro came and then Taraera, and there was a Benante. There was a couple that kept entering the market or in, you know, where we were in San Francisco, which might be so much different than entering the US market in New York or Florida, New Jersey because that's much closer as you know, geographically. And then the coast on the other side is a good market too. California is a a huge place. It's almost the size of Italy, honestly. And I think we do have some some data for you later, but we have a really educated, wonderful customer base in the Bay Area that learned to trust us. And then, you know, when I said to them, they said they want Pino noir, and I said to have you had Galleopo? Have you had Nebula? I mean, they most people have had a Nebula or San Giovanni, quixante Brunllo. And there's this whole other world of wines that really became a love of mind to find the taste to learn and know and I thought that was pretty normal at the time. So we have, like, our language in the restaurants is, you know, the language of Italian wine and how to pronounce it correctly along with the dishes is something that we take seriously, but we also have a lot of fun. You have to be able to really enjoy what you do. Like, right now, our team at a sixteen and our kitchen and the front of the house, we were working together. It's one of my favorite moments. Of course, we had to rebuild completely during COVID, even though we were open the whole time minus one week that everything was shut down, we didn't do to go because we knew that peace in Napolitana wasn't gonna travel. That great. We really wanted everyone who comes into the restaurant to have the best flavors and the the best examples of wine that represent, the grapes because we knew that we were introducing them to someone who maybe maybe they didn't have a fionci Avolino or Brudicchio de Castella de sie. And so there was some that we tasted and they felt like these are great. We can afford to pour these by the glass. And then we would do it extensive by the glass program, forty wines by the glass, carafe, by the bottle. And then we are also there to back it up and hand sell the wines. That's just how we operate our service and And, we also wanted to be balanced on food wine and service at the restaurants so that if you came in, you felt welcome, and you also it wasn't like we are just giving you a wine list that you are not super unfamiliar with. We would make it comparable to to wines, like, has an American Somoye, we study, the wines of France first because and the wines of California are in our backyard. And that's just the way that the exams are written. There most of them were about when I was taking them about seventy five percent French wines. And I think Italy for the amount of of wine that's produced here, it was extremely underrepresented in the exams. And that's sort of why I didn't understand that there was seventeen other regions that really weren't that represented on the exams. And, they are now. Now you see them a lot more, but it just, you know, just to give us a background in have the knowledge of a professional. We wanna know what these wines are, where they're from, how they taste. And then now we've, at the restaurant sponsored over forty some ways, and we know that travel is a huge part of really understanding Italy because it's the most beautiful place. And each region, you can really do there's a section that says what grows together goes together. We put in here. And so in the wine book, we have it. So there were twenty years that Kate and I have been been coming to Italy, the a sixteen book was Southern Italian, half wine, half food, and then SPQR did the other half. And the way we we divided the list was really based on which ones predominantly where you have mostly olive oil. In your cuisine. And the other one was like, okay, this dairy was we we had to make a fictitious boundary just within ourselves to how we organized it. So when Ten Speed asked us to do the Italian wine book, we started this process about seven years ago. It slowed down a little bit in COVID, and I started a wine club during that time because we were that we're pivoting. It was a big word. We used a lot in COVID, and it helped me to finish the book because I was so focused on the restaurants and we had deadlines to meet. Kate kinda kept me on track because we're we can pretty much finish each other's sentences right now. She would be jumping in right here. We started this regional wine club because we wanted to go over each region and how we how we organize it in this book. The second part is each region from a to v, and we talk about the history of each region, you know, do our best job at it. There's a lot more that you could put in here. Because, obviously, it's a very big subject. It's about one hundred and thirty thousand words, which is about thirty thousand words more than originally it was going to be. And we wanted to tell a story, and that's what we do in the restaurant every day. We tell a story about each wine. Our team, we get to know not only the wine, but your personal story, your family story, your journey, and you were in California explaining this to our customers and each other and Learning things as we go along as well. So for us, it's it's a big part of it. And so that's another reason why it's such an honor for me to come here because I'm talking about it all the time. And, you know, this, like, going we sort of been doing this book tour, And so me being outside of the walls of the restaurant, but also, you know, talking about Talia wine, I feel so comfortable and there is no shortage of things to discuss. Definitely not. Yeah. And, Shelley, I mean, you've introduced so many people to the world of Italian wine, both your customers at the restaurant, but other Samuel's as well. But could you talk to us a little bit about what was it about Italy that attracted you initially and really captured your passion and interest? Cause think that's what we wanna learn and impart on today's audiences. How do we take the passion that you found and create that in the next generation? I think there's a couple things. Well, when I first was learning about Italian wine, there is very few people going to the south very few people going south of Rome, and except for a mafia coast, even the Aetna. And I think, you know, when we opened in two thousand and four, there were no cell phones. There was no Google. And we were getting lost all. That's how the name a sixteen came up because We literally kept finding ourselves back on the a sixteen when we were looking for an Agra Theresamo or a restaurant or and, wineries, we were knocking on winemakers' doors just to try to learn what about Tarosi and Urpina and uncovering things that we didn't know that vines grew on trees here, you know, in some ways. And, like, you know, there were so many traditions and, of, vine training and stories from grapes like esprit deodia vergia or if you're inumbria and and talking to John Pierobella, and he's talking about Treviano Despo Latino of the poplar trees on the neighbor's properties and getting contracts for those. And that's the kind of passion that carries over to what we do. And then we get to sell that wine when we hear that story. It's in just incredible. So it sounds like there was a bit of that discovery factor that drew you in, like that. Yeah. The first opportunity to really explore, get lost, stumble upon people. In early days of, like, in the nineties, I worked in French fine dining, so I had to know Garrett on service Broad, Bordeaux, burgundy. And but even at that time, I was working for an Alstation chef, And we barely had any wines from All sauce, and I was studying, and I was saying, you know, Uber, there's a we have two three different types of frogwah, and we have, you know, different things like we I was asking him about his families you know, heritage. And today he has his a vineyard in all sauce and restaurants in Vegas and things, but but it was still not it was a timing thing. We weren't really thinking about it. And and his partner who had the restaurant before he went in. They only had red red wine, white wine, but everybody's drinking martinis, you know, cocktails. And then so you go get the the wines from there. And then after studying, I really wanting to come to Italy, and I chose to go to Sardinia. It's the first place I went. And then Rome and, umbria. It was and then, like, we went to Baltellina after that. It was just sort of a straight trip. We just didn't know because I hadn't been in I remember having, being inumbria and having in Perusia and umbricelli pasta with truffles and a Sanrentino. And I had, like, light bulbs going off of my in my brain and, like, just the most beautiful, simple foods that tasted perfect. And I really understood how to eat pasta. Like, it was so different from what I grew up with, and and also pizza. It's peach we didn't I didn't grow up. I didn't know what Nepal pizza was. And now We've been certified with the VPN for twenty years since two thousand and four. It's because of food and wine is something in Italy that we wanna put together. And so I think about enjoying it is from having coming to Italy, and we try to share that with our guests as well. But you really I think traveling is really important, and it's much easier now for Americans to really find their way around Italy and discover places and maybe an Airbnb, which is is actually started in San Francisco Mhmm. Because someone was s sleeping on their friend's couch and, you know, found out that wouldn't it be great if I could stay someone's place. So anyway, it was it's really, like, opened up travel for Italians and and, you know, I mean, it must be something for an older generation to see how many people wanna come search out your these wines now and the see the families that we're selling grapes that are now producing their own grapes. So there's just so much, evolution, and I think it's a great time for Italian wine. I always think that. But but there's just the quality and the connections. I mean, for me, I mean, I am working with Italian wine, but It seems like the government and the organizations are really doing a great job of bringing people into their regions and taking some education to the US. Italian wine podcast. Part of the mama jumbo shrimp family. Definitely. Just moving on, I mean, looking at the wine sales in the on premise in California. Thank you, Jeremy, for giving us some data points here to look at. We still see Italy, you know, number three in California, but pretty, you know, far behind in France in terms of number of placements. And then, obviously, USA being backyard is number one. So there's still a lot of work to do in the California market as we can see to get the trade in some ways on board with the category and increase the number of placements on wine list So talk to us a little bit about what you're seeing today with your team at a sixteen, but just the general community of Somoyais in San Francisco around Italian wine. What is getting them excited? How are we getting them to pay attention to the category? How are we introducing them to the category? I think when you look at places like, let's take Mount Aetna for one. And or there is just a lot of work being done within regions. Like, last year, I was at the Prasetco superiority region. And I really even though I know Prosecco, and I have, you know, I've tasted through producers, I know which ones really fit with our programs. And, also, I mean, just the sheer amount of spritz being poured in the world today. You know, it's like, it's like, it's a creating kind of a happy hour thing. It's just it's awesome. I love it. I think my first spritz is here at April wasn't imported yet. We took some home in our suitcases, you know, and and there's just so many traditions here that we we try to recapture and bring back to the US. If you think about prosecco, now you can be like, yeah, this is a good spritz prosecco. These are conversations that happen. In our markets because everyone's has a some sort of spritz on the menu. And then, you have a prosecco that you now, because you can explain where Cartice is or what the, you know, there's rosé proseccos have been coming through. And the same in other regions like Aetna Bianco, Superior, or granzole, Cianci classico, and things that you want to. It's not easy for the consumers, but so really, like, having that education continuing is extremely important because, for instance, a lot of people think of Keonti as Italian red wine. And even though today, there's a lot more people asking about Tarasis. I've never had a Tarosi about you know, coming from California, we're just reminiscing how how Zinfandel is in California related to Primativo. And I thought the first time I went to Pulia, it was just gonna be all about the Primativo, but I was wrong. And there's just so much to learn, and part of the learning is the journey. And you get to explore and kind of be very open about what you're gonna discover and looking for quality. And you're gonna find it in every corner of Italy But how do we get that to the US market is, you know, I think just having programs that educating the team is. Right. Mhmm. It's easier said than done, but I feel like I mean, I'm sure there's ways in the people who are selling the wine in our market. Hopefully, have all the tools. And, like, they share and come by, taste the wines, and, and really, you know, bring that warmth of hospitality back to the US. And when it comes to introducing, let's say, someone who starts on your team and is newer to the category, you know, we know Italy's complex, not just the sheer number of regions and grapes and everything there, but also the rules and regulations, How do you introduce someone to the category? Because I think that's something we wanna think about as well when we're coming to the US market. How do we talk and present our wines in a way that's digestible for a somebody who might be newer to the category? I've seen such a great improvement on, just the presence of the Italian education of wine. I can't think of a another country. I mean, I have a one of my dear friends is the ambassador for Portugal. Portuguese wines, and he's doing a great job. But in terms of the presence of of a country coming together, and within that country, I have so many so much biodiversity of grapes, and have the the regions really speaking, a language upon their own. So I think that it's some ways are are really wanting to learn and to understand that. It it's always unbelievable to me to see how within Italy, sometimes I break it down, like, this wine's aged like a barolo. It's right. It's for you from a different region. This wine's aged like a barolo because those are words that really most of the wines that are found in bigger markets like the Bevmos and the total wines will be predominantly from Tuscany, Piedmont, and Benito, but you will find that there's wines from all over Italy in there too. And so I've been seeing that more and more. And then the small the smaller boutique wine shops, they have a different way of purchasing wine. And so they're really hand selecting wines that fit with what their message is on what they believe in wine and what their customer is looking, you know, what they want to, like, give to their customer, recommend. Right. And something you mentioned as well was earlier was travel. Like, traveling to the region, left this indelible mark on you about Italy. And now that things are open again. We have wineries and winemakers and principals coming to California as well. And what would you tell an Italian winemaker or export director coming to California about the market that's different maybe than the rest of the country. We know every state has its nuances, but what would you give as advice to somebody coming to California perhaps for the first time? It's so interesting because for what we do, we already have Italian wine in our restaurants. We're looking for it. They're still and we're really open to to tasting as if time allows because, you know, there's certain hours of the day. If you're in a restaurant, it can't be, like, you're always like rushing to get open in our in our world. But I think that, you know, sometimes just, maybe at the end of the day, if you didn't get a chance to see someone you really wanna taste with, or and you have something open, you could bring it by for them, or set up an appointment with them, or if depending on everyone has a different way of of making appointments for winemakers, but I think that, you know, say you're going to a restaurant that has Italian wines, but less on the list. I think that you should taste them on it being like open because if you go to Italian restaurants only, then you have a smaller pool of people that in a bigger market. Sometimes as Italian sommelier, in America, you do think backwards because we're saying, you know, if you like Bordeaux, try this wine, if you like Pino, try this wine, But sometimes, you know, in California, let's say we have Mexican foods, you know, maybe, but, like, it could be like a cal not just, like, any Mexican food. It could be like a bigger Or it could be, we have a just a lot of different ethnic cuisines, I guess, but we represent. And then we have California cuisine, which is very Italian in spirit because we have a lot of Italian farmers who immigrated to the California And and we're a Mediterranean climate. I think there's five Mediterranean climates in the world, and California is one of them. And so we grow very similar things, and it makes so much sense. So it's great for us because we can recreate dishes with ingredients that we grow locally, and we can ask our farmers to to grow things or maybe bring back things that they'll hopefully grow for us, which has happened or, you know, because we do things like peppers and we have kales and, you know, you name it. But, but I think that, there's a there's still a lot of work in a room for Italian wines and And but it's already on a great path from where I I mean, we we that going back to the Aetna, when we first opened, we had three. Now we have over a hundred. Wow. You can get. And It's amazing. It's incredible. That means people are bringing them in importing them and selling them and restaurants looking for them. Yeah. And speaking of Aetna, we pulled the top five regions. This is for California. So we have them ranked in terms of the number of placements. Is there anything you found surprising here, Shelley, or Pretty much what you thought. Well, it's it was great for the, Tarantino Alto Adice when I was I was came from I came here from Palm Springspoon of wine, and I'd never been to the desert, which is down by, Mexico in South South California. And, I was doing a talk there, and I was trying to find some Italian wine. The talk was about soil types, the volcanic, and was the was the theme. And and, I had a hard time. There's a market for Italian wine needed to in these palm, the springs need some Italian ones. A lot of fun. Yeah. It's so much fun, but it it, so there was some Italian wine, but for the topic we were talking about volcanic, I couldn't find any. And so I ended up talking about a limestone. And then we then Jeff talked about volcanic soil. And, but in the shops down there, they had a row of Italy, and then they had a another sign sign that said Pino Grigio. So it's it's still, the which is which is great, except there's so much other wine in Italy, and and they did have some they had some great producers and things, but that's how they're selling a pretty big corporate store is selling their wines. And so it it was interesting for me to walk in because I'm used to having the restaurant, you know, picking wines and selecting. So I thought that was fun. Yeah. I think you can think maybe about California as also multiple markets within it as well. We have on the next slide, here are the top five regions, by placements where San Francisco is specifically a little bit different than the state, right, not drastically, but We do see some differences with Piedmont first instead of Tuscany and for Julie as well. Was there anything here that surprised you? No. It seems it seems I think that there the I think what the takeaway from this is that there's more other regions from the top three that are being represented and growing. Even though, you know, it's the sheer number of wine coming from them is I mean, Lombardia is a huge producer as big of a producer of wine as same with, I mean, freely as well to to see that. And Italy on here, it was the non DOC wines. That's what Italy represents. Yeah. Right. Exactly. Looking ahead, Shelley, just towards the future, obviously, a lot has changed for Italian wine in the US in the last thirty years that you've been working in California. What do you think's next for for Italy and for wine in in California specifically? It was I was having a great conversation with Jeff and and Danielle yesterday because because, they're, a brussels having a great moment. And I think I think that's a sign of the future where, you know, regions that don't have big cities in it that there isn't a Rome or Venice or Florence. It's, less traveled for, so to get there is, is not has well known or easy. So to have, wine magazines, wine enthusiasts focusing on a brusso for a feature is incredible. And then I know that, you know, just going to the adriatic side is is much less traveled in in the south as well. So I think that that you'll see a lot more people exploring regions that they weren't before. They're really in And, you know, movie, it like shows like White and Lotus and and Stanley Tuchi are doing, you know, they did a great job for Italy. Yeah. Just highlighting how how beautiful it is and and, I mean, they didn't go with the wine regions and and the white lotus, but it's still, it was wildly popular. I mean, I heard about I heard about the visitors. The tourists. The tourists are there. Thank you, Shelley, for being here. Thank you. So it's an honor to have you and congratulations again on the new books. Thank you all for being here as well and for being a great audience. Thank you so much, you guys. Thank you for joining me today. Stay tuned each week for new episodes of Master Class US wine market with me, Juliana Colangelo. I remember you enjoyed today's show, hit the like and follow buttons wherever you get your podcasts.