was a Selbach-Oster Riesling (a quintessential German wine from one of the finest producers in the Mosel Valley) and a Vincent Dampt Chablis (an equally classic French Burgundy from the latest generation of a storied family). Despite the offhand presentation, both wines were carefully culled middle-range offerings fromwell-regarded vintners. All the while, Armando spoke with the ease of someone who had known me for years. I later discovered that reps typically start with their simplest and lightest wines and finish with something phenomenal and way beyond the shop owner’s price range. In this case, it was a La Spinetta Barbaresco 1997, a blockbuster Italian red from a stellar year priced at approximately $200. “And why don’t you keep this to drink tonight?” he suggested.
The next day, I was nervous to meet our rep from Southern Wine & Spirits, the nation’s largest distributor, which had just barreled into the New York City market. Southern had consistently expanded and then dominated each new market. It grew from a one-man shop in 1968 to a national powerhouse representing over five thousand brands in thirty-eight states. Even before it came to New York in 2004, Southern was selling $5.5 billion of wine and liquor per year.
This time they had expanded not just to seize an opportunity but, apparently, to settle a score. A few years earlier, Charmer Sunbelt, the biggest New York–based distributor, had allegedly violated a gentleman’s agreement by opening a distributorship in Florida, Southern’s home turf. According to a former sales manager for one of Southern’s fine wine divisions, the move was due to Charles Merinoff, the overreaching son of Charmer CEO Herman Merinoff, who could not resist the temptation to expand their empire. “That kid could fuck up a wet dream,” the pinkie-ringed former manager told me. Southern, also run by a father-and-son team, Harvey and Wayne Chaplin, purportedly saw betrayal.
For the next two years, the manager averred, Southern plotted revenge. They studied the New York market. They identified thebest salespeople, the proven brands, and the key accounts. Then, in 2004, they pounced. According to a lawsuit filed by Charmer in 2005, Southern quickly made off with twenty-five key employees, supposedly even going so far as to offer a $5 million signing bonus to one particularly valuable recruit. In quick succession, Southern also acquired the exclusive regional distribution rights to such cash-cow brands as Absolut vodka and Plymouth gin. They followed by picking up a prestigious wine importer, Lauber. In describing their New York arrival,
Wine Business Monthly
said Southern “steamrolled” into the market with “military precision.” The New York wine and spirits business had not seen such upheaval since Prohibition.
Instead of Darth Vader, in walked Matt Moriarty, the soft-spoken Southern salesman with tousled hair. Wearing a toolarge suit, Matt, it turned out, was a French wine fan who made custom guitars in his spare time. From his wheelie bag, he wowed us with selections from two superstar Italian producers: Silvio Jermann and Feudi di San Gregorio. Hardly what you would expect from the Evil Empire.
Scion of a Friulian vineyard founded in 1881, Jermann revolutionized the wines from that northeastern Italian region best known for its lean white wines. Fond of inventive blends, Jermann resurrected long-forgotten native varietals such as Pignolo (literally, “fussy,” which seems apt given its reputation for low and uneven yields) and Malvasia Istriana (a local variety from Istria, a peninsula east of Trieste that Italians still rue having ceded after World War II) to create dense, complex wines. Like a mad scientist, the reclusive Jermann is reputed to be so enamored of the alchemy of winemaking that he is rarely seen outside the vineyard. The names Jermann gives to the family wines have onlycemented his idiosyncratic reputation. “Were Dreams” is what he calls one
The next day, I was nervous to meet our rep from Southern Wine & Spirits, the nation’s largest distributor, which had just barreled into the New York City market. Southern had consistently expanded and then dominated each new market. It grew from a one-man shop in 1968 to a national powerhouse representing over five thousand brands in thirty-eight states. Even before it came to New York in 2004, Southern was selling $5.5 billion of wine and liquor per year.
This time they had expanded not just to seize an opportunity but, apparently, to settle a score. A few years earlier, Charmer Sunbelt, the biggest New York–based distributor, had allegedly violated a gentleman’s agreement by opening a distributorship in Florida, Southern’s home turf. According to a former sales manager for one of Southern’s fine wine divisions, the move was due to Charles Merinoff, the overreaching son of Charmer CEO Herman Merinoff, who could not resist the temptation to expand their empire. “That kid could fuck up a wet dream,” the pinkie-ringed former manager told me. Southern, also run by a father-and-son team, Harvey and Wayne Chaplin, purportedly saw betrayal.
For the next two years, the manager averred, Southern plotted revenge. They studied the New York market. They identified thebest salespeople, the proven brands, and the key accounts. Then, in 2004, they pounced. According to a lawsuit filed by Charmer in 2005, Southern quickly made off with twenty-five key employees, supposedly even going so far as to offer a $5 million signing bonus to one particularly valuable recruit. In quick succession, Southern also acquired the exclusive regional distribution rights to such cash-cow brands as Absolut vodka and Plymouth gin. They followed by picking up a prestigious wine importer, Lauber. In describing their New York arrival,
Wine Business Monthly
said Southern “steamrolled” into the market with “military precision.” The New York wine and spirits business had not seen such upheaval since Prohibition.
Instead of Darth Vader, in walked Matt Moriarty, the soft-spoken Southern salesman with tousled hair. Wearing a toolarge suit, Matt, it turned out, was a French wine fan who made custom guitars in his spare time. From his wheelie bag, he wowed us with selections from two superstar Italian producers: Silvio Jermann and Feudi di San Gregorio. Hardly what you would expect from the Evil Empire.
Scion of a Friulian vineyard founded in 1881, Jermann revolutionized the wines from that northeastern Italian region best known for its lean white wines. Fond of inventive blends, Jermann resurrected long-forgotten native varietals such as Pignolo (literally, “fussy,” which seems apt given its reputation for low and uneven yields) and Malvasia Istriana (a local variety from Istria, a peninsula east of Trieste that Italians still rue having ceded after World War II) to create dense, complex wines. Like a mad scientist, the reclusive Jermann is reputed to be so enamored of the alchemy of winemaking that he is rarely seen outside the vineyard. The names Jermann gives to the family wines have onlycemented his idiosyncratic reputation. “Were Dreams” is what he calls one
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