Ep. 2085 McKenna Cassidy interviews Tatum Zangara | The Next Generation

When my family literally blindfolded me. It took me very literal. Yeah. They blindfolded you. They poured you. I think, like, Carla Rossey, and then dark horse and apothic, and then blended them. Still blindfolded. I think the delatorre might have been in there. Preety, T. Yeah. You would have known that one blind. Definitely. Yeah. I still would. Ravena really stands out. Oh, that's sick. The awesome. Who wants to be the next Italian wine and bass there. Join an exclusive network of four hundred Italian wine ambassadors across forty eight countries. Vineetly International Academy is coming to Chicago, October nineteenth is twenty first, and while Mati Kazakhstan from November sixteenth to eighteenth. Don't miss out. Register now at vinegary dot com. Welcome to the Italian wine podcast. This is the next generation. With me, your host, Mckenna Casa, For the next thirty minutes, I invite you to explore with me what young adults are up to in the Italian wine scene. Today, let's feast on our discussion of Italian wine, travel, food, and culture. Thank you for being here. Grab a glass with us. Changing. Okay. Hello, everyone. I'm Mckenna from the next generation of the Italian wine podcast, and I'm with Tatum Petrozello coming in from New Jersey. Hi, Tatum. Hi. How are you? Good. Thank you for joining us today. I'm calling you from Chicago. So it's a great joy. And we have so much to talk about, for the community listening or perhaps viewing. I know we're recording this video for the podcast going live on Instagram, but Tatum and I have worked together in the past, and, we've gone to different directions of the wine industry now, and it's such a treat to see all the new stuff going on. So, Tatum, if you would be so kind as to tell us kind of who you are, where you are, and what you're up to in the wine scene. Alright. So, I have been in the wine industry for about thirteen years now. It was one of my, first or second jobs out of college and I knew nothing about wine when I started. Absolutely nothing at all. So when I started, I felt really dumb and nervous. So I really dove into the knowledge end of the business. So I started by getting my specialist of wine certification, that I did special spirits, and then dove into the world of the, Guild of Master Tomalier. So did inter song certified some, really fell in love with Italian wines, So trailed off into the Italian wine scholar program, and becoming Italian wine wine trade certified. That's awesome. So now, currently, I, I work on the private client services team at Zachis, which is a high end wine retailer in the US. And then I also just opened my own wine shop in Point Pleasant, New Jersey, featuring alba wines. Congratulations. It's so huge. I I know you said you fell in love with Italian wine, like, what captivated you about it? Why was it worth further study for you? So my family is my my grandparents are from Italy. So I think I just gravitated naturally towards it, although I did not come from a wine drinking family whatsoever. I think I just naturally gravitated towards it. I lived in Italy for a little while with a family, doing an exchange program when I was younger and I traveled Italy many times and just absolutely love the country, love the food, loving the wine goes hand, and hand was loving the food. So I think it was just a natural gravitation, and not to mention they they make phenomenal wines in Italy. It's true. That's awesome. I remember Tatum the video of you, like, blind tasting three, popularly priced wines, and then accurately blind tasting them all mixed together. Your Italian when my family literally blindfolded me. It took me very literal. Yeah. They blindfolded you. They poured you. I think, like, Carla Rossey, and then dark horse and apothic, and then blended them. Still blindfolded. I think palazzo delatorre might have been in there. You p d t. Yeah. You would have known that one blind, definitely. Yeah. I still would. Corvina really stands out. Oh, that's sick. Awesome. Where should we go first? So let's talk briefly about Zackies, and then we'll dive into everything with your wine cafe. So I know that, you're kind of sharing with me before we started the pod that private client sales are often, to consult members of an older generation who have the, finances to support significant wine sales. And, they are buying perhaps popular brands. And so I was wondering if you could tell us about exactly selling approach and then your service for those private clients and kind of how that works just for context. Absolutely. So Zachis is very multifaceted. We have a brick and mortar store location. And that service is obviously clients in that area, but then we have a very wide reach on, the website And then what I do is private client services, where I work directly with clients, and I manage their accounts for them. So I'll send them early access to when Susokai is released or or Elias is released. You know, twenty nineteen Brunellans were a huge focus for us, obviously, a great vintage. So I will work with these clients directly to service their needs and get to know them on a one on one basis so I can better serve them. Zachie's also does storage, which is very important to temperature control the wine. So we have some clients that basically just store their wines with us because they don't have a big enough cellar or big enough wine fridge. And we'll keep their wines and they can just pull from that whenever they're ready to pull from that. And then when all of that is finalized, we also do auctions. So people might collect with us for years, and then we will go and do auctions and we sell wines on behalf for our clients as well. So auction is a great space. You can get some really great wines that are aged, you know, back to the fifties and sixties are some of the older ones that I've seen. And you have ability to get these, which you would not be able to get anywhere else. So it's it's really cool. They definitely have all their bases covered from start to finish. That's so amazing. Where is the storage taking place? The storage is in Port Chester, New York. Okay. Wonderful. And so and that's convenient because then It's coming from where the warehouse is anyway. So it's easy for someone to just request that it be stored. What are some of so for the twenty nineteen brunellos, like, what were some of the hits? I personally love the LaSini was one of my favorites. The cast move of a denari, all of their vineyards are were great. Love those. I think some of the more value ones, the Tiachi was really great. I loved the Argiano that I got to try on the heels of the number one one in the world. Which is funny because eighteen wasn't the greatest vintage Jean Brodello, but now nineteen is a stellar vintage. So, All of those were some of my personal favors when I got to taste through. That's so cool. Does your and your team taste, when you go to the office and then you're able to control appropriately? Yes. We taste a lot. It's a huge bulk of what we do when we're in the office. We have a lot of trainings, which is amazing. We have a lot of winemakers that come through. Zachy's is definitely a recognizable game for being a powerhouse not just in the United States. I have We have, offices in Hong Kong. I have some clients abroad. So it's a very recognizable name, very respected name. And we get a lot of people that come in from the wineries directly to to train us. And speak with us. That's pretty awesome. And then do you kind of collaborate with people in the younger generation at all, or how would you say that Zack is marketing towards the next generation of wine drinkers as well? I think that's a really big focus for us now. The the collectors are, I would say, of an older generation. So for younger, right now, I I think Zack is is really trying to focus on how do we grab new. How do we get the attention of this younger generation? And I think they're just exploring all avenues. I think the younger generation likes a little bit of lower alcohol, a little bit more security and not just go into those big names over and over and over again. So I think everybody in the wine industry is aware of this, and trying to figure out the best ways to cater to the other generation. Let's see. We're I was just talking about that with Dan Petrovsky. He was here working with me in Chicago, and it's the it's the cultural space that Mossicon is designed for, which is lower ABV, high acid whites of interesting grape varieties, the eighty four year old Tokai for Yolano vines that he's farming in, like the Chile's Valley area are alm like I've never seen a thicker trunk on a great vine in my life. Like, it I actually drink months ago, last night. Oh, great. It was like a tree and the bunches were at least, like, a foot and a half long. Like, it was like a It was so cool. And that was that vine was planted when Tokyo was not trendy. Like, it was just faster winemaking post war than, red wine. And so it just was, like, It's just amazing and the the wines are really heading it off here. So I feel like that's definite a space that people are interested in. And then what do you think is the value if there's some wines that are of such high caliber that aging is recommended? How would would you, if you were to share with the next generation, like, the value of aging wine, how does that how do you help that make sense to them? Yeah. It's tough too because I wanna drink things the second I get them. It's exciting. I have, my my sellers around five hundred bottles, and I still buy something. I wanna drink that bottle immediately instead of the other ones that I've that are ready to drink. I don't know why I've already acquired. If it's financially available to you, I always tell people to buy a few bottles. And if you can't wait, you can crack that one open now and then put two away and forget about them. If you can do six even better, if something comes in the original wood packaging, that's even better because you can kind of hide them places and forget a little bit about them. And I would say what I'm learning is how much wine can actually be an investment. If but but that investment does take time and energy. You have to store it properly. We all know wine will go bad if it gets too hot, too cold. So it is important that it's stored correctly, but I do see a lot of people's investments payoff when maybe they bought something in the nineties that a red burgundy in the nineties might have cost you forty dollars a bottle. And now, and this is not an exaggeration, they'll go for a thousand dollars a bottle. And that's that's not every single wine. That's that's not every wine in every single category, but it is interesting to look at the investments that people made twenty years ago that are now paying off, huge in wine. And then I think there's other people that had a really big interest in maybe they had a big interest in Spanish wine. And now they've moved on and they don't really love Spanish wine anymore, but they have this huge collection. Well, now they can go sell that off instead of having to drink through something. They don't like, give it away. You have that option of of being able to sell it off. So I think my advice for holding on to line is to one do your research on what's actually going to age and keep an eye on it. I think seller tracker is a really good website to use. You just pop things in, and it kinda does the work for you. You remember what you have. You can, look at the drinking windows and the recommended drinking times. So you're not afraid to open something, thinking it's too young. That's very helpful. And then just knowing what's not gonna age, be able to know I'm gonna drink this valpolicella really early. I'm gonna drink this, pepperino next week. You know, I think it's a balance of both, being able to get those that you want to lay down and store and put away. And then there's the other ones that you just wanna pop open on a Tuesday and and not worry about. Yeah. What do you feel like is an underrated age worthy wine from Italy? Underrated age worthy. Underrated. Honestly anything from Tuscany, anything from Tuscany. I think Tuscany wise get drank really early. Not Bernella. Yeah. Super Tuscans. I think Super Tuscans tend to get drank early because they are delicious early. But they do have a great window. I think one of my favorite wines, that I've had is the nineteen ninety two Moseto. Really one of the most amazing wines. I've I've got to we did a dinner, we did ninety five Oriliah, which was phenomenal, but the ninety two mosquito was just next level. It was amazing. Wow. Was it just expressing more depth and different types of flavors than you had it just had so much texture, so much flavor to it, and so much complexity. And then in the same night, we had tasted the nine, the two thousand nine Macheto out of a magnum, and it was amazing. And then we had the ninety two about an hour later, and it made you just completely forget about how good the nine was because the fruit had all gotten so integrated. As you remember this really great kind of like orange peel flavor on the finish that I just was in love with. And, there definitely was not enough to go around for me to have as much as I wanted to, which would have been seven glasses probably. That sounds so amazing. And I know you had mentioned to, tell me about Lota Vico and, Antinori and how you met him and, like, what that interaction was like. So it was actually at those dinners that we got to have those wines. And it was really cool. Lota Vico had had produced this new project called Lovico, which is a Supertuscan. His first release, I believe, was the twenty vintage, and it is supposed to be his swan song into retirement. This is gonna be his final project. The wines were phenomenal. Although we got to have the ninety two. I mean, we did a wide range of ninety two all the way to two thousand and twenty, but our I'm sorry. Twenty twenty. Yeah. Absolutely. Right? It's, I've had coffee yet. I'm just so late in the day. I know it is. I still haven't had coffee. So we got to have this wide range, and it just really showcased his ability to make wines. He has not made Misseto Oll or Nelaya since I don't wanna quote an exact year because I'm not positive of the year. So Lotte Vico was his dive back into the wine making world and the wines was phenomenal. Outstanding. And you're sitting in a room filled with wine. So tell us where you are and what's going on with this beautiful space. Yeah. So I'm at my wine I call it a wine cafe. So I'm at Baker's wine cafe. I own this. I started it. Actually, we opened about six weeks ago. It's been packed busy. I partnered up with another local family in Point Pleasant, New Jersey. And they are doing Wood Fire pizza. They are, from Italy as well. And the the oven that we have actually came directly from Naples. So it's Maple style pizza. They do the pizza. I do the wine, and New Jersey. If anybody doesn't know about New Jersey Liberal laws, they are intense. It's very difficult to get a license. So the license that I was able to get was a New Jersey Wine license. Being with my background in wine, being a sommelier and being admittedly a little wine snobby. I had to partner with the right winery that I felt made really great wines. So New Jersey has really interesting weather. In the spring, it could go from being eighty to being forty within a span of twenty four hours. So those shifts in temperature are really difficult for grief growing. And we are the garden state. So we have great soil for growing corn and tomatoes. But but that's just it. We have great soil. Grapes are grapes don't like grapes. Well, grapes love great soil, but we don't love the wine that's produced from great soil. So you have to get to some terrain where you're gonna struggle a little bit. So I ended up coming into a partnership with Alba. They are in, the Warren Hills AVA, which I believe they were the first AVA New Jersey. There might be one other but they were the first actual American Vitipultural area in New Jersey, and they have great soil very rocky. Their entire terrace is built from rocks that they pulled from their soil. Which are these huge huge shoots. I I've limestone rocks. Wow. And they have different planting aspects. So they have hills. They have little valleys. They have to grapes, plant in the direction that they're gonna get the most sunlight. And they are the only Piena noir that I've had in New Jersey that should not be arrested for making Piena noir. They're Piena noir's delicious. Somebody last night compared it to a Piena noir from Oregon, which was very flattering. But we have their wines there. We offer wine flights where you can sample any four, and then we do buy the bottle offerings as well. So, ranging from Rosier to single single plot, cabernet franc, and I think the wines are great. That's pretty amazing. And you have a wiggle, but you have a waiting line every night. It sounds like for We have been very busy, which we are very fortunate to be busy so early on. We have a great community. The the community endpoint Pleasant is amazing. It's a great sense of family here, a great sense of loving being local to here. So people like supporting local businesses and family owned businesses. So It's been great and not only is ours family owned, but Alba's also family owned. It's just a husband wife and and their two sons, and the sons are kind of, taking over. So it's great to work with them. They're a great family, and it's a beautiful winery. And and when people, they can come here and they can drink the wines, they can go to the the vineyard and enjoy sitting in a beautiful vineyard covered in these gigantic stones that they've from their land. And what's the demographic that hits you up at Bigger's wine cafe? Is it, like, both older people and younger people or a mix? Yeah. It's a little bit of everything. We have, indoor and outdoors heating, and then we also have a little lounge area. And I think the lounge area plays more towards the younger crowd, I think how to a lower table and just kind of comfy chairs to hang out in. We got one review saying it is a a friend's Cafe vibe. Like, you know, the show friends, the show friends, which I love that because that's kind of what I was going for. Nice. So, it's I I love being here. I love talking to everybody, and we've had just really great people come through and be excited for us and just enjoying themselves. This is awesome. We're gonna have to do a case study on, like, the different cheeses on the different on the neapolitan crust and how it pairs with the lines, like a master's Are the pizza so good. I have a gluten allergy, and I crack sometimes because I can't take it. It's so good. I can't believe you are making that pizza in an establishment where you work and you have a gluten allergy. Like, you're gonna import flour. They actually have, they have lemontello wings, which are amazing. How are those achieved? So they're done. They're still done on the wood fired, oven. Okay. And it's made he makes a lemontello sauce. I don't know exactly how he does it. But it it tastes like chicken fried cheese on a wing kind of, but it's delicious. Ah, that sounds amazing. I know your cafe is named after your puppy, and, we loved baker so much. Would baker Did Baker ever eat the Italian foods that you fed him and would he approve the lemur check? Yes. Baker loved tomatoes. Oh, love tomatoes. He was a perfect dog. Big tomato eater. Yes. I think you'd he would eat any pizza that you put in front of them. So I think you would approve. That's awesome. And your your family, I'm sure, adores the cafe. And what do you picture, like, in the winter? Are you gonna, like, do any special features or activities to Yeah. It's clearly. I think we're going to, I think we're gonna have some live music. I think we're gonna do some maybe trivia nights, maybe bingo nights out or something like that. Nice. And then we'll try and make some seasonal specials I do pictures of sangria, so maybe some seasonal sangrias and things like that. Yeah. And I also offer mocktails. So I know that there's a big wave of of Genex specifically that that doesn't drink anymore, but still loves to be in social settings and feel like they're included. So I have, a line of mocktails as well. I do, like a mojito, an island spread, a cosmo, all zero proof alcohol, a lime margarita, all zero proof alcohol, which I have been going really well because a group will come in and and half will get a flight and half of it a mocktail, and is very accommodating. Yeah. And I also want to add some wine education series in the fall. I think people are interested in learning more about wine. And I've always prided myself on speaking about wine in a very relatable way. You you do. And I so I I would like to kinda branch out with that. You would be killer at that, and I think the next generation too is somewhat concerned about formality. And, you're really good at engaging people with just kind of frank terms, like, no do you have no fear surrounding the wine and you understand that it's fermented grape juice, from a place made by a person? And so explaining that all the more simple. Yes. Oh, that'll be so nice. Well, I hope to visit and attend one of these awesome classes. We can't wait to see you. I yeah. I can't wait either. Thank you so much for sharing with us about your experience at Zacis and in the Italian wine scene. And congratulations again on your new cafe. I think it's gonna be the top place in Point Pleasant any day now. Thank you so much. Of course. Okay. Cheers. Thank you for joining me today. Stay tuned each week for new episodes of Master class US wine market with me, Juliana Colangelo. 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