Ep. 2527 Unearthing Italy’s hidden gems: sourcing & positioning small-batch grower wines | wine2wine Vinitaly Business Forum

What kind of, you know, do you feel is the best resource? You know, anything from a database to just networking to kinda find new distributors for other markets. I think that, distribution is the key to all this. As I said in that three legged stool example, distributors are the KEYWORD you can't really do much without the right one. And different distributors are right for different things. So if you're starting small and you wanna work in a few in a few areas, I would even start with picking the right the right states, the right markets. Certain markets you're gonna be more successful in than others. It's really hard to go into a markets, the biggest markets, and try and be successful and get any attention out there. So for me, it'd be more about attention. It'd be more about, blocking and tackling and having a strategy where I wanna be in these states, and that's why. Welcome to the Wine to Wine in Italy Business Forum twenty twenty five Chicago edition, where global wine professionals share insights, strategies, and inspiration from this year's conference. Let's dive into today's session and explore the ideas shaping the future of art. Welcome, everyone. Thanks for joining us for this new session of the ITA track dedicated to the wine, to the wine business, to the wine industry. And, today, I'm very happy to welcome a celebrity in the American in the American wine industry and in the import of Italian wines to US. He's a winemaker. Probably only few of you knows that he is a winemaker. And he started his career in Napa Valley, of course, where he come from. But probably only few of you knows that he started his career of winemaker in Italy as a knowledgeist at a very prestigious winery, which is still part of your portfolio, by the way. After five years, almost five years, he came back to United States. It was 1990, and, his focus was in a way the shift between being a winemaker and started becoming an importer of Italian wines. In that year, he had, this kind of vision and, he decided to found Dalla Tera Direct, a business model which was something revolutionary, something very pioneering. A model based on a connection between wineries and The US distributors, minimizing the importers footprint. This was the original idea behind this great project. Now, this year is celebrating the thirty fifth anniversary, and actually I have to take a bottle of sparkling wine at the end for the celebration, by the way. And so today, we will have the chance, thanks to him, to understand better which was the vision behind this project. And the title of this, session is clear. But we would like to understand from, him how his vision can apply today in this kind of critical challenging environment that we are experiencing. So welcome, everybody. Welcome, Brian Larkey. Grazie. Grazie, Roberto. Prego. Prego. Now, Roberto didn't really get much of an intro, so I've got to say a couple KEYWORD about him. One of the true leaders in Italian wine today, One of the leaders who who is currently the CEO, not just of Fontana Freida, but the entire group. I asked him today how many wineries they he coordinates and runs. 14 different wineries throughout Italy, including global sales. So that's a huge hat, a lot of responsibility, and I think it's great that we got paired up together today. So we've known each other for years, lots and lots of respect. And, his perspective, my perspective, I think today we're really here to respond to the questions today. So I've got a presentation prepared, but I didn't really know who I was making the presentation for. So I'm gonna we'll do a little poll to see who who's here today. Yes. How many people are Italian wineries wanting to come to The United States? This was a nice, nice pool. Two. Okay. How many people love Italian wines. One day they went to a restaurant, they had a great bottle of wine, they thought, I can do this. I wanna bring some wines in The United States. One. Really? Two. Okay. So if you're not here to sell wine to The United States and you're not here to buy one and bring it into The United States, give me a dis because I'm gonna tailor this talk to this group. Right? So who are we? Give me an idea. What group did I not mention? People who love to drink wine. Okay. We got a lot see, everybody here is a winery. On prem retail. So you're a couple steps away from how it gets into, how it gets in The US. Okay? Restaurants. Okay. Italian wine lover over there. Our distributor in Nevada. So you don't really Yeah. We're gonna propose things to you, but you're not necessarily on the forefront of figuring out what comes over here. And another distributor from Florida. Just to give you an idea of kind of who came to this. I figured it'd be 90% Italian wineries from here that wanted to come to The United States. Boy, was I wrong. Are you Italian? Not Italian. So we've we've got a a good mix, a good group here. What I thought I would do is we'll start off with giving you a little bit of background. And, essentially for Italy, people that are in the Italian wine business, it's usually one of two stories. Oh, I just came back. I had this amazing romantic experience sitting in this little trattoria, And I fell in love with Italy. And I wanted to bring it home with me. Or the other story, I was in this really wonderful trattoria in Miami. And I thought to myself, wow, if Brian brought on these wines, I bet I could sell them too. Business either as an importer or as a local distributor. And so, what today's talk was about initially is giving you guys some background, some understanding so we're all starting in the same place in terms of what The US market is like. And understanding that, then we can move forward because I wanna make sure that everyone's clued in. So basically, we're all here because we love Italy. We're all here because we fell in love with Italian wines. And, not just with the wines, but with the people, with the culture, with the foods of Italy. And there's no bigger love affair than between The US market as a whole and Italy. It's Italian style. It's Italian design. It's Italian food and wine, obviously. And this has been a huge part of American entertainment for fifty years, at least. You know, after you know, after World War II, you know, in the '50s and '60s, people began to look into it. By the time the '70s and the '80s, we were on fire. Italy was on fire, and it's only been going up from there, from the eyeglasses to the shoes that people wear that they're near. It's all Italy all day long and I would never worn this jacket otherwise. I mean, it's just So, we are in love with Italy but there's a huge opportunity here but it's gonna take the right kind of individuals moving forward. I don't think we've ever seen a more difficult, more challenging market than we have today. Challenging in all respects. Demographics are shifting. Economics are shifting. And the entire marketplace is currently on a on an escalator, and it's going down. It's going down. The market is going down. So all things in The US are in a pendulum. Everything swings. And I think that our pendulum goes relatively slowly. I think it'll be a few years, this until things begin to pick up again. So let's understand a little bit better about what's going on. But essentially, there's going to be winners and losers at the end of this. You know, five years from now, there'll be a lot of different players in the marketplace. This is what I fed into AI, and this is what came out. I love this. Market learnings of America for make benefit. Glorious nation of Italia. Obviously, Borat was my coach on that one. But, that's a lot of what we're here to cover today. So just as an overview of what's going on in The US right now, it's incredibly challenging for selling Italian wines, not just in The United States, but around the world. Italy, all of Europe, Asia, everything is a big challenge these days. Challenge for us as importers and distributors, restaurate