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A Family Lunch With One of The Country’s Largest Wine Importers
• by Jordan Mackay
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A family that eats together stays together. That’s something you can count on, and a good sign for the wine industry that I was happy to see in action on a recent trip through the Midwest, when I braved Chicago traffic to have lunch at the offices of Paterno Wines International, one of the leading importers and producers of luxury wine (those over $14 a bottle) in the United States. By the company’s estimates, it markets more than 10 percent of the country’s luxury wines. The company is run and owned by the Terlatos, an Italian-American family in all of its classic, blustery ways.
The Paterno offices are north of the Windy City in a ritzy exurb called Lake Bluff in an imposing Tudor Gothic mansion, Tangley Oaks, that rests on stately sprawling lawns. The Terlatos purchased the estate in 1995 and had its restoration carefully managed by Thomas Rajkovich, whose particular expertise is the designs of the original architect, Harrie T. Lindeberg. A tour of the place took us from the lavishly furnished and decorated living and dining rooms to the more spare servants’ quarters that now house the marketing department. It’s an office that feels like a residence.
I had been told that an invitation to join the Terlatos for lunch was an experience not to be missed, though I wasn’t prepared for exactly what that meant. I was going for the sake of diplomacy, to meet the people behind such classic brands as Chapoutier and Josmeyer of France, Gaja and Pio Cesare of Italy’s Piedmont, St. Hallett and Petaluma of Australia. And I was going out of curiosity: I had been told by countless people that the Terlatos were characters worth meeting: the head of the family, Anthony Terlato, and his sons, William and John (though only John was in town that day). What I got from my visit was a peek into a business that runs like … well, a very business-like family. For one thing, they all wear jackets and ties around the house.
As we sat down to lunch, I apologized for not wearing a tie. I had a suit on, but wore my collar open, unlike the other seven males at the table who were dressed in immaculate business suits.
“It’s OK,” said Tony Terlato. “This is all just for show.”
The business end of the visit took the form of a tasting by wonderful master sommelier Joe Spellman, who functions in a PR/educational role for Paterno but is really the house guru in matters vinous. He treated us to a comparison of Syrahs from across the Paterno book, meaning, among others, a smoky and complex 1999 Côte Rôtie “Les Bécasses” from Chapoutier in France to a deep and rich, peppery Shiraz from Petaluma in Australia’s Adelaide Hills region. Paterno’s portfolio is both deep and wide. They provide us with Gaja, some of the world’s most expensive wine, but they also bring us Moschofilero from Boutari, a $10 gem from Greece that they’re betting is going to be the next big thing or at least a lot bigger than it is right now, which isn’t very big at all.
Lunch began in the kitchen with bowls of littleneck clams with flutes of the simple but refreshing Argyle sparkling wine from Oregon. Ten of us crowded around the large kitchen island and talked chaotically across each other and to the person next to us, while crusty bread was torn and dipped into the clam sauce left in our bowls. It felt like a family meal.
Lunch at the table was a bit more formal, but the conversation remained lively, with people jumping in from across the table and the talk hopping from the vineyards of Napa Valley to southern Greece to northern Italy. Tony Terlato, as patriarch and head of the company, dominated the table from his central position, and it felt right that he should. He predicted that within a couple of years there would be 30 Moschofileros (that’s the grape) on the market. He’s not afraid of the competition; he just wants his version from Boutari to be solidly entrenched as the No. 1 brand when it happens. To be sure, it’s a wine you should try. For $10, it’s a great food or aperitif wine and it’s different from just about everything out there. With a soft nose that swerves from floral to melon to citrus, it’s a wine with more body than its 11 percent alcohol would suggest and more acidic verve than you would think.
It was 4:30 p.m. by the time we finished our grappa (from Nonino – if you like grappa, you must seek out this brand), turned down a friendly offer for an after-lunch drink and prepared to enter Chicago rush-hour traffic. I apologized for keeping the Terlatos and their associates so long, but they said, “Hey, this is what we do almost every day.” While I truly doubted that, at the same time I could see that they did indeed function as a family and that lunch was an important ritual to them.
I left gladdened to have seen the people behind brands like Rutherford Hill Merlot and Chimney Rock Cabernet (Napa) and even Santa Margherita Pinot Grigio, the No. 1 import wine in the country. While these brands may seem stolid and impersonal when they’re just bottles on a shelf, in fact there’s a couple generations of a passionate, argumentative, convivial and hospitable Italian family behind them.
It’s a good thing to see a business that takes the time to eat together like a family, and a family that stays together to run a business. Theirs are wines I can happily support.
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