493: Neil Empson Shifted Gears Into Wine

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[00:01:27] And I was delivering a Ferrari that I had to a niece, to a customer who was going to buy the car. And I traveled through those tunnels at ridiculous speeds. We were driving along the autostrada, and the next thing I see in my rear vision mirror

[00:01:59] is Mercedes 6.3. German plates and Munich right behind me. So I moved up the speed, and kept moving speeds up and down. It went on for about an hour and a half, but I would never let him get ahead of me.

[00:02:40] In fact, I drew away from him, but I had to slow down again. So we'd meet again. Five years later, I'm now in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, and Gunther Sachs was the name of the gentleman

[00:03:04] that had the villa in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, and loved cars. And he was sitting there having a glass of champagne with his beautiful marionette wife. And he said, what's your favorite car? I said, oh, you have to qualify that. He said, well, sedan. And I said, well,

[00:03:30] I said there's only one sedan that I would buy, and that's a 6.3 Mercedes. He said, really? He said, that's interesting. He said, I have one on blocks for my son.

[00:03:43] I have put on blocks a few years ago. He said, yeah. He said, it's a great car. He said, I had a race with a Ferrari coming down from Milano to Genova.

[00:03:55] And I said, you were in a beige Munich plate, Mercedes 6.3? He said, yeah, how did you know that? I said, because I was in the blue Ferrari that was racing you. And then he said, oh my god,

[00:04:22] he said you wouldn't give in. And he said I had to give in. My wife was under the dashboard, and I drove into a gas station pretending I had to get gas, which he didn't need. And that was the end of him.

[00:04:39] I'm Levi Dalton, and this is All Drink to That, where we get behind the scenes of the wine business. Neil Emsen on the show today. He is the founder of Emsen & Co. and has worked with

[00:05:15] Neil Emsen on the show today. He is the founder of Emsen & Co. and has worked both in wine brokerage and wine imports, primarily with Italy, but with other countries as well. Hello, sir. How are you? Oh, fine. Thank you.

[00:05:27] Really nice to see you. Well, it's good to always good to see all friends. So you were born in New Zealand on a North Island in the late 1930s. 1939. Yeah. You were in a big family. You had several siblings,

[00:05:42] but you were the one who made his way into the wine business. The only one. My two sisters, Margaret and Heather, live in Australia now, and I didn't really grow up with them that much because I was sent off to boarding school

[00:06:01] at 11 years of age. You grew up on a North Island? North Island. Yeah. What was it like at that time in the 40s, 50s? Well, it was very rural. I'd walk to school and walk back again. I'd walk to get

[00:06:17] any groceries my mother wanted, and then I had a whole lot of customers where I'd mow their lawns to make money. I was very particular about a lawn, how it looked. So I did that as a kid,

[00:06:36] played rugby when I could, and then didn't study much, not till I went to high school. So anyhow, getting back to a team, let's call it, after playing rugby, I realized how important a team was. If you didn't have that relationship with the other

[00:07:06] players and they respected you as a player, you never won games. I was a wing three-quarter. If I got the ball, I scored. I could run like a bloody trooper. Did you start with rugby in boarding school in New Zealand?

[00:07:26] Oh yeah. Well, even before boarding school, I was playing rugby in primary school. I was playing with the kids of my age. In New Zealand, if you were a boy, you played rugby. You got into the business of finding and repairing and then reselling old automobiles.

[00:07:50] I've always loved classic cars, especially Ferrari, the Scalietti. I was a big fan of Scalietti and a big fan of two-seaters. I had to resell them because I needed the money to carry on the wine business.

[00:08:11] Tell me a little bit more about that. How did that happen? How did you start getting involved with automobiles? Well, I think it was 1969. I left London to marry a New York lady, a famous model she was.

[00:08:33] I met Maria and the other wife, she left me to marry a photographer and she was a model. So that's how that went. Then I met Maria and the first thing we did was to resettle in England. In London, we moved to in 1970, 1972 or 73, something like that.

[00:09:14] And I was running an electronic business for an American company that had difficulties in England. And they thought I was somebody who spoke a little closer to the English accent than somebody else. So I got the job.

[00:09:36] So that's how all that started. And I had taken over a Ford Mustang Cobra to England. So I put it up for sale and I got more money than what the Ferrari cost. So I bought the 330 GT Ferrari, Pininfarina, and then I sold that.

[00:10:08] Twice the money that I paid for it. I sold it in California. In fact, all the Ferraris I bought, about 27 of them, I sold in California. And who did you sell them to?

[00:10:25] Well, there were various people. So not all of them were sold in California. Some were sold out of Italy, like the ambassador of Switzerland. He bought a GTB4 6C, which was a competition

[00:10:42] Ferrari, and it was for his wife. So we went for a spin around close to Bologna, where they flew into. And I made triple the money on that car. There was, I'm not saying it was a nouveau riche,

[00:11:04] it was a different kind of customer that bought a Ferrari. And there were car lovers, they heard the aesthetics of the car. And the 12 cylinders roaring was very special. And for my ears, that was the sound that I wanted to hear tuned up.

[00:11:29] So before I sold the 330, I bought it in London. The mechanic who worked for Ferrari in the Formula One in England, brilliant mechanic. He redid the motor and he pushed the car out, started like that. And he had it tuned to the way a Ferrari should be tuned.

[00:11:58] Never forgot that. So that was a beautiful experience with Ferrari. It was a very interesting period because I needed to sell them, but I didn't want to sell them. I was always in love with what I had. And the car had to be perfect before I sold it.

[00:12:20] Before I sold it. And the people that bought them have always come back asking for more. I could see the value in the cars then, but I missed the big parade of owning a Ferrari.

[00:12:38] And you know today to buy a Ferrari is, they're very expensive. And the ones I had would be worth over a hundred million today. But you know, who knew back in 1974, 75, 76 that we would have that situation. You actually sold a car to a spy, right? Is that true?

[00:13:05] Yes, I did. Not knowing who he was. My friend in San Remo, he had this 365 Ferrari and he couldn't sell it or didn't know how to sell it. I said, give it to me, Sergio.

[00:13:21] I'll sell it for you. So he lived in Milano. So I drove my car down and picked up the Ferrari and took it to the airport in Nizza where I was to meet this American guy who wanted to

[00:13:41] to buy the car. So after I qualified him, I put it all together and went down and did what I had to do. And he's exactly what I thought he would be. He was a well-dressed, well-educated person.

[00:13:58] And he arrived with three women and he took a look at the car. He said, if it runs as good as it looks, he said, you got a deal. So I showed him it probably runs better than it looks.

[00:14:16] I said, I'm a particular person when it comes to quality. So took him for a run and then he drove a little bit coming back and bought the car. He said, can I pay with a check? I said, no.

[00:14:37] I said, you have to pay by bank transfer or cash. He said, okay. So he opened up his briefcase and handed me $14,000 for this GTB4. So there was the end of him. And I went back to my friend Sajo,

[00:15:03] who was a crazy driver and Sajo couldn't believe that I sold it. I was with his wife who came with me. So a few years later, the owner, not the owner I sold to now, the original owner, my friend,

[00:15:25] he got a visit by the police. He said, who did you sell the car to? He said, oh, I don't know. My friend sold it to somebody in France and said, you're being a little bit of a detective.

[00:15:45] He said, why? What's the problem? He said, we found the car abandoned in the bush. And we traced the owner who was a CIA operative. I sold the Ferrari to the CIA operative who was looking for some kind of separation because he was after the Red Brigades.

[00:16:14] And the girls were part of a show. So that's how we found out that he was CIA. But it went smoothly, got the money, paid for it and that was all perfect. So from that Ferrari

[00:16:32] to another Ferrari. And then I went down to Sicily to look at several Ferraris with the Taggafloria. I thought for sure there's got to be some. And so I hired a guy. I said, every Ferrari

[00:16:49] you find, I'll give you 500 lira, 500,000, I guess it was. He found them pretty quickly. He found six of them, one of which was a GTB6C, a competition Ferrari. He only used it a little bit

[00:17:10] because you're going to use it in Sicily. He offered it for 3.4 million lira. And I said, would you take three million? He said no. He closed the door and walked. I said, just a moment. I said, I thought you were going to negotiate. He said, no, it's not

[00:17:33] negotiable. Three million, 500,000. Thank you. I said, you got a deal. And I shipped the car back on a truck. I didn't want to drive it. I shipped it back on a truck to Milano and Milano used

[00:17:55] Cropaldi, who was a Ferrari dealer. All the cars, several of which came were Cropaldi. The Super America, the 330, and now the GTB4 and others, I don't remember exactly. So the Ferrari thing is in your blood. And so I wanted more, but they were drying up

[00:18:21] so quickly. And that's when I said, you're not going to survive on finding just a few here, a few there and making that kind of profit. You got to do something more important.

[00:18:35] And loving wine as I did, I said, good, I'm going to go into the wine business. My wife born in America, but she was from Italian family. And she was interested in moving to Italy. You had met her in New York.

[00:18:55] She was the instigator and she loved the idea of going to Italy because she spent many years in Florence going to the Belliate. And so her family, when they first met me, said, oh, but he's not Italian. And the sister said, oh, but he's very nice.

[00:19:22] So that's how it all started. You found a nice apartment in Milan that you lived in for decades. Oh, we lived in Milano from 1969. We drove down from England. I had a Ferrari, the 330 GT, and Maria wanted to drive that.

[00:19:51] So she drove that down and I drove the R Bentley, Bentley R, a 1954 Bentley. Bentley. Wasn't a Continental, but it was a classic Bentley. We drove down and went to see her friend, Beatrice, in Milano and chatting with her. And she said,

[00:20:22] where are you going? And I said, well, down into Tuscany. And she was from Tuscany. She said, no, the Tuscany is Manana land. This is where business is done right here, Milano. So

[00:20:40] with that, I said, well, this is where we ought to be. And we drove around and I saw a poster on the wall of a building as they do, or as they did then and took it on first sight.

[00:21:01] It was a hundred dollars a month. It was pretty cheap. It was a two flight walk up. So it wasn't so good with groceries and all. And we started the Emsen and Company. I was a founder. My wife, I pulled into it. Yeah. Smart man.

[00:21:30] Yeah. She was a smart lady too. It seems like it. It seems like a lot of key decisions got made because of the Bolini and- Well, she was more involved in the accounting, anything to do with money. She was very good

[00:21:43] collecting money and also being part of the decision-making about how good the wine is. We always agreed. We had a very similar palate. She's a great chef and loved wine, but didn't drink wine that much. I didn't know this.

[00:22:05] Yeah. She was a milk drinker. But Maria is a quick learner, very bright lady. And she was a wonderful asset for me as a partner and for the companies that we formed.

[00:22:23] And we started Emsen and Company as a broker, but nobody paid. They'd pay once they got paid and I couldn't handle that. So I changed the company over to an SBA. That gave you the ability to invoice customers directly. Yes.

[00:22:45] And that was a big deal because you had trouble with people paying you. Oh, you know, the Italians are not so good in paying their bills on time. They pay, but you have to be patient. They usually pay when they have to reorder in Italy. So I

[00:23:03] forgot all about Italy and concentrated on the US. And my first customer was Ezra Webb. And Ezra Webb was in California. He was in Pasadena. And Ezra Webb then sold wine that you had sent him to Trader Joe's. To Trader Joe's, Container Loads, Catignano, Chianti Classico. And

[00:23:30] then eventually we added things all along. But California, I saw great potential because the wines were so different than California wines. The city levels were different as indeed they are in France. But I saw the passion that Californians had

[00:23:53] for food and wine at their restaurants and certainly their wine. Mondavi was a great inspirator in that area, as you certainly know, Levi. He was like Gaia. He was always traveling, loved an argument, was very knowledgeable. And I think deep down he was very Italian, Mondavi. Yeah.

[00:24:24] So California was important to me and then we moved. Ezra Webb went out of business or I'm not quite sure what happened. So I avoided going to French importers because they had French wines in their interest and not Italian. And I picked that up straight away.

[00:24:48] And what was your approach on the street? How did you sell wine? Well, it was all about quality. And I never went to people who didn't know anything about wine.

[00:25:02] And I was all about quality. I didn't want to sell Robert da Corsa, as we say, wines that were distributed in great volume. That wasn't my thing. It wasn't about money. It was about quality.

[00:25:21] That's the route I took to market. And it was the right route because some of them are still our customers today. So I had one passion that was selling fine wine and making sure that the importer was going to put them in the right places.

[00:25:45] So a lot of these wines were not cheap, for Italy that is. So we're over that hump now and now we're going into another era of the wine business, much more expensive, much more young people's approach to wine, which is a good thing mostly.

[00:26:11] I imagine the buyers changed a lot in the 80s and 90s. There must have been a lot of development of more knowledge about Italian wine. When we started trying to sell Italian wine, it was not easy. I remember that first container.

[00:26:27] It took ages and ages just to put together. But my interest was not selling quantity, was selling quality. So Brunellos and Barolos, all the things that I grabbed, too, were very much an important part of our portfolio. And selling to importers

[00:26:52] that didn't even knew these wines and they couldn't believe the wines that they were tasting. So from that part, once they got, they tasted the wines, they got it. Because the Italian restaurants were mostly run by Italo-Americans who wanted to buy the

[00:27:16] wines on the cheap. So if you had a wine, you offered it for 400 lira, they could buy it for 200 lira. So I didn't work that market very well. I went into the more expensive wines where people

[00:27:37] understood the quality and price. After the break, we'll hear about a young man arriving in the United States to help promote his family's wines. Because my father didn't know languages,

[00:27:52] so my father pushed me at the end of the 60s, beginning 70s, to go outside and to reach new markets and to reach new experiences because traveling is the best way to learn. So I started

[00:28:09] traveling and having experiences and knowing and talking to people and so on. What a fantastic experience I remember always in 74 when I met Robert Mondavi, you know, and talking to him. It was contagious because he was doing a lot of experience in a way to increase the perception

[00:28:29] of the California wines and making better quality wines and so on and the steps that he did and so on. So I believe that at the time in the 70s when I started traveling and I had much more

[00:28:44] perception and my knowledge increased and this was an experience that my father never had and for me was quite useful. And I knew new teachers, you know, or new people even that I could

[00:28:58] capture some experience and creating my knowledge and so on. But again, it was my father that pushed me and he said because honestly at the time Barbaresco and Barolo were two wines not so well understood in the market and apparently it seemed that especially the market outside

[00:29:23] from Europe could be difficult to accept similar wines because it belonged more to a culture that we had in Europe, the culture of Terroir of course at the time, the culture of indigenous grape

[00:29:39] variety that could produce special wine, original wine. The idea that this originality has to be protected and maintained absolutely because it's something that gives a specialty for a wine that gives a special character. But besides that if you have a wine that is different

[00:30:00] because of its originality and so on and after it's important to teach people how to drink and how to use. So it seemed that not because we were underestimated US people that

[00:30:13] now it's not by chance that it's the most important market for premium wine in the world, US. But at the time it seemed to be difficult to introduce this kind of wines even Brunetto Montalcino, Amarone and so on, Barbaresco, Barolo outside from Europe. It seemed that our cradle,

[00:30:33] the area that could accept more our wines was Europe. My father forced me and he told look you have to explore and so on. And this was another was a step for me quite important. What was it like traveling around with Angelo Gaia to accounts?

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[00:32:35] What was it like traveling around with Angelo Gaya to accounts? You know he's a great long talker and he uh, the only thing he'd have to do would sell a ton of wine when we traveled. I took him to all the best places, the best restaurants,

[00:32:55] the best importers and he enjoyed that. We did very well together as a team but he had a bigger picture and he told me one day, he said Neil, he said I'm going to change my direction, I need to

[00:33:14] change the importer part. I said well Angelo if that's what you think you have to do, that's what you should do. How was it with the quantities? Was there much Gaya wine to sell or? Working with

[00:33:30] Angelo was, was wonderful because he enjoyed the quality that I was after, he enjoyed the quality of our portfolio. He didn't want any trailers, hangers-on coming with him on the trip and he

[00:33:49] was highly focused, very permontese and he brought a lot to the table, a lot to the industry. He became, I introduced him to Marvin Shankin way back. We did a vertical with Marvin,

[00:34:11] not that Angelo liked to do this but I told him it would be a good idea if we did and to show how long your wines will last. I remember Marvin saying,

[00:34:24] boy he said this tastes a lot like a Burgundy and I said you're right. As they get older, the Pinot Noir and Nebbiolo have a lot in common and they sure do. And Angelo also was somebody

[00:34:42] who worked with international grape varieties in terms of making a Chardonnay and then making a Cabernet. Was he making those wines when you worked with him? Oh yeah, yeah. Whatever Angelo produced, we couldn't sell as Dolcetto. That was a hard sell also for Bernato. Valverde was

[00:35:05] little more approachable for the market. We did as Fuches, we were the first in America to do Fuches. In the 70s you did Piemonte Fuches and that was mostly around Gaya? It was all Gaya, the single vineyard Barbarescos and we were getting up to around 11,000 cases,

[00:35:31] not single vineyards but of Gaya, Barbaresco. So he became quite famous. Everybody wanted him, everybody was buying, sometimes more than they could sell but he was a voice, a very strong voice.

[00:35:52] And you worked with Charetto for a time? Yeah we did, we worked with Charetto for a few years and when we picked up Gaya, I told Bruno that we were taking Gaya, he said what? He said no,

[00:36:09] he says either Charetto or Gaya, you have to choose. All right Bruno I've chosen, I'll take Gaya. He couldn't believe it and we were doing 1,200 cases of Charetto. I couldn't work

[00:36:28] with somebody who was going to dictate how to run my business and it was a good choice because Angelo, we became famous together. And you started selling a lot of Chardonnay? Yes, my own brand,

[00:36:45] Bouligny, I started off the Bouligny trend. We didn't have Chardonnay in Alto Adige Trento area, they called it Pinot Bianco until I found this analogist, he said that's not Pinot Bianco, he said it's Chardonnay. I said oh good, can I go with that? He said well you can.

[00:37:13] He said we have to get approval from Rome to use the name Chardonnay on a label. So had people do that, we got permission and or they, the winery got permission and Chardonnay, Pinot Grigio, that was the two wines that we sold mostly. And I met a California

[00:37:40] guy who was the king of puree mineral water, Bruce Nevins. Bruce was from California and Bruce tasted Bouligny, he said oh he said I love this. He said can we get the agency for the

[00:38:00] US? I said absolutely Bruce. I said if you do as well with Bouligny as you did with the Piret, he took Piret from 40,000 cases to 10 million cases. He was the king of mineral water then

[00:38:17] and he sold out and got into the wine business. So Bouligny was still going today, Cobran is our importer, one of the top importers in America and they do very well with Bouligny. We should be doing more but. Spoken like a true Italian right there.

[00:38:41] That's the first thing that comes out of their mouth. Always. And they're right. You know if you have quality, there's always you can do more, you have to try harder. Your sales people join these relationships and it's all about relationships.

[00:38:58] If you don't have a relationship, you're on the wrong street in my opinion. But we're now 52 or 53 years in the wine business and we still have wineries that go back to when we started. You worked with Eno Friuli right? Niccolio Eno Friuli, Puati. Puati.

[00:39:24] What was that like, Puati? He was a difficult man, very passionate about his area, very passionate about the quality and that's where we started the first Chardonnay. They made the first Chardonnay which we sold under Eno Friuli and then of course with Bouligny came a little later.

[00:39:52] And did you talk to Puati about what kind of bottle shape the Chardonnay should be in? Yes, he didn't agree. He said the bottle shape is not important. I said well it is to me. I said Chardonnay is French and it's always in a burgundy bottle.

[00:40:10] So let's not confuse the customer with a Bordeaux bottle and he agreed. It was very, he and his son came later on but he was a very passionate wine guy and he certainly knew what he was talking about, a great analogist.

[00:40:32] That was the first time someone had imported an Italian Chardonnay into the United States? Yes, yes. But with that Eno Friuli from Puati. Eno Friuli, yeah. Eno Friuli, yeah. Eno Friuli. From Puati. Puati.

[00:40:45] And that at one point was a large amount of your sales, right? Like a third of what you sold? We sold a lot of Puati, mostly to California. We were selling, well a lot in those days. 20,000, 30,000 cases.

[00:41:05] So what did you think about grape varieties that had a lot of reputation in France being made in Italy? Because it seems like this is something that's come up amongst a few different producers that you imported.

[00:41:17] Well you know you've got to hand it to the French in their marketing. Their burgundies, forget about Bordeaux, I mean everybody loves a great bottle of Bordeaux. But I'm a burgundy guy rather than Bordeaux. And I think the best quality wines come from burgundy.

[00:41:38] We have imitations of those wines. Gaya does very well with his Chardonnay. And a couple of other growers are producing Chardonnay also. So you brought in Yerman, that was a big deal? Yeah, Yerman and Anna Fuglia, they fit together because Anna Fuglia were doing very, very well.

[00:42:05] And a firm in New York came and said, well if he's doing 20,000 cases, we will do 80,000. Wrote the check. On the bottom line. And I got a phone call, no advance warning, nothing.

[00:42:24] And we're out and a firm in New York, an importer in New York, they went bankrupt later on. That must have been a difficult day to get that phone call.

[00:42:36] It was a big part of our invoice too. So I went on to my research and mostly at restaurants, top restaurants. And I love this Tounina from Yerman. But it was a good thing we launched Yerman.

[00:42:57] He made wines much more in favor of what I was looking for in France. The vintage Tounina, all his wines had residual sugar. But the wines did very well in America. And I'll never forget having lunch in New York with Zachary, Don Zacharia. Do you know Don?

[00:43:26] I do. So let me back up. I'm still in Italy and we went to my favorite restaurant, Rebo. And the head of American Express joined Don for lunch. And he was a French lover. So I asked him, what would you like? He said, Santa Margherita.

[00:43:54] So I said, what are you currently drinking? From France. And he said, Merceau and blah, blah, blah, blah. So he took the glass. He said, this is Italian? I said, very much Italian. He said, God, this is so good. So he looked at Don and he said,

[00:44:23] and you bring this in, Don? And Don, of course, said, yes, we do. The guy ordered it right there on the line. So anyhow, when he finished with Santa Margherita, I said, how can you go from

[00:44:40] a Burgundy to Santa Margherita? Nothing against Santa Margherita, well-made, but it's water, purified water. What did he say? He looked at me, he said, well, it's the leading wine out of Italy. And I said, yes, money buys a lot of things.

[00:45:02] Germain found a lot of favor with critics and I think was doing well at the high end, right? They were expensive for Italy, but they had the integrity of the wines that I liked, meaning the Burgundies. They were the closest thing we had to a Burgundy,

[00:45:24] even though I don't compare them. And Germain, we did over 60,000 cases. But Silvio, wonderful wine guy, little awkward as a person, but he certainly knew how to make great wine. He was one of a group of people that were kind of praised by and in a travel circle

[00:45:50] with Luigi Veronelli. So, Veronelli liked Germain's wines. Oh yeah. Gave him some counsel. And you used to read Veronelli's work. Always. And what... Well, I mean, I would take notice when he gave it five stars or three stars or whatever he used.

[00:46:10] And then I'd go up to the winery and taste them. We didn't take anything on that I wasn't familiar with. And Germain was brand new. He'd just come back from Canada. He was an oenologist in Canada

[00:46:27] and took over his father's winery. And he loved cars. And so we made a nice relationship. We had him for many years. Another white wine producer that you worked with and for many, many decades was Bucci, Ampelio Bucci.

[00:46:46] Ah, Ampelio Bucci, who is still representing Bucci. Ampelio lives in Milano and the guy that owned the Ferrari, he loved Bucci's wine. And I went over for dinner and Sergio poured a Bucci,

[00:47:05] a Villa Bucci. And I said, oh God, I've got to have this. This is wonderful wine. And so we drove down to the winery and met the oenologist. Giorgio Grai. Giorgio Grai. Giorgio, well, that's a long story.

[00:47:26] He was known to be not the nicest person, right? Difficult to work with. Oh, very difficult. Nobody could tell him anything. With Bucci, it would all be done by phone. Move this barrel over to number 10 and so on and so forth. I'll never forget in Italy,

[00:47:49] a woman came up to him and said, oh, you know, my name is Jessica or whatever it was. And I make a Piemonte wine. I'd love you to taste. He said, okay. So he went over to taste the wine. I went with him and he took one taste.

[00:48:18] He said to the woman, you shouldn't be making wine, lady. Change your profession. He walked away. Terrible. He was quite rude. It may be worth asking why, if Giorgio Grai was so rude that he had a job. And this is what

[00:48:36] Ampelio Bucci said about that topic in episode 369 of this program. I find a man very interesting because he's an old man. In my opinion, with a fantastic nose, with a fantastic palate, but with the bad character, I don't see. So impossible to work.

[00:49:02] Everybody say, yeah, Giorgio Grai is very good, but he arrive three o'clock in the morning. We fight and we hit everybody. And this I found very interesting because if he fight with everybody, he cannot work for big industry because it's eight o'clock in the morning until seven o'clock

[00:49:29] in the evening. Seven o'clock we close. So if you arrive midnight, you sleep in the car. And so he cannot work for us. And I think I am able to learn very rapidly what I have to do in

[00:49:48] the vineyard because I am farmer from 40, 50 years. And I know very well what I need somebody that help me in the winery. What I am not able to do is make the blend of these five different

[00:50:06] verdicchio from the different crops. And I begin to work with Giorgio Grai with some psychological technique. Always he must work alone because the problem, his problem of character is always with persons. Fight to not to go in the restaurant with Giorgio Grai because perhaps he begin to fight

[00:50:32] with a chef or fight with people on the table next because drink wine in a bad way. So I don't know, a red wine ask to have. Oh no, this is too cold. Please, why you say too cold the red wine?

[00:50:49] I can maybe call that beginning discussion and finish. Giorgio Grai, who has now passed away, was a specialist in white wine in Italy at a time when most Italian analogists were known for red.

[00:51:04] He was good at blending, which is a skill set Ampelio Bucci specifically needed help with. And Ampelio felt that he could arrange it so that Giorgio Grai didn't work with other people

[00:51:14] in person. You'll notice how Neil said Giorgio Grai did his work by telephone at the Bucci winery. Also Ampelio Bucci is someone who draws a sharp contrast between artisanal and industrial producers

[00:51:28] as he did in his interview. And the fact that Grai wasn't suited to work with industrial producers seems to have been a draw. We'll hear more about the Bucci wines after a short break.

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[00:52:33] at offsetpartners.com. That's O-F-F-S-E-T partners with an S dot com. Offset is focused on the wine industry and can embrace the nuanced needs of your wine brand. How did you find those wines to evolve? I remember the 92 was smoking. Oh, they evolved beautifully over the years.

[00:52:57] What'd you say? You had a 92? Yeah, so good. I've had it twice. Oh, yeah. Really good. Yeah. Well, that's an indication of one's palate because the wines were not weak. They had integrity. They had the acidity and the structure of French wines that people loved.

[00:53:26] I was a Burgundy friend also, so Burgundy was a good reference for me. Another producer like Bucci that you had from the beginning that you still have today is Conti Costanti, which is a Brunello de Montalcino producer. We still have today.

[00:53:44] And that's a wine I'd love to hear you talk about because it's also one of my favorite Brunello de Montalcino. Good. Costanti, the Count Costanti whom I met, we got on very well. I loved his wine right from the get-go. I saw something that nobody really knew,

[00:54:09] and that perked up my whole interest in Brunello. Emilio Costanti, he called me one day to come, would I come down to the winery? He had something important to tell me. So I drove down,

[00:54:27] and my Italian in those days was not very perfect. So Maria came with me, and we sat at the dinner table, and he poured me his wines. He was the one that made me think a lot deeper into Brunello and to Tuscany. Emilio was a beautiful guy.

[00:54:53] A beautiful guy who's a food critic, and he made marvelous Brunello. He said, you know, he was in hospital actually. He got out, and he wanted to see me before. But he said, you know, he said, I adopted a son, and his name is Andrea Costanti.

[00:55:26] I went to school with his father, or we were in the same food section of his career then. And he was introduced to Andrea, and he liked Andrea. He was still in university.

[00:55:47] He said, what I want to do is to adopt Andrea and give him the winery, but I need you to help me select the analogist and sort of steer me in the right direction. And I said, well,

[00:56:04] the only analogist that would fit that category is my old friend Victoria Fiore. So Victoria Fiore was the guy. Andrea was the adoptive son, and Andrea just fit the perfect

[00:56:28] wine owner in my opinion. And he took Costanti a few leaps up, and Costanti had a lot of energy in the wine, but you had to be patient. They weren't upfront Brunellos. That's my kind of wine. I love wines to evolve. You also are an adoptive parent.

[00:56:56] Absolutely. Tara came into her life in 1989. She was born in 84, and Maria is from Rhode Island, as you know. And her first cousin used to take in children that were to be adopted,

[00:57:16] or she adopted on her own. And Tara was one of those. And she got a call from her cousin saying, I need help. Is it possible you could pick Tara up from school, from the Head Start school?

[00:57:35] And Maria was actually there visiting her cousin, who was a racehorse breeder and racer. And Maria said, absolutely, I'll go and pick her up. So they arranged it, and Tara came down the aisle, and she held Maria's hand and walked. And two minutes into the walk,

[00:58:02] she stopped and put her arms out like this, and she put her head on her shoulder. She said, I love you. That was it. That was it. And so we went through the adoption process.

[00:58:19] A woman from Harvard did all the interviews with us. And the reason we got the special woman is because this is a special child, and didn't want to make a mistake, because that's a huge mistake if you give back the child after adoption.

[00:58:42] She's super intelligent, and a little difficult, I would say, but nothing that we couldn't deal with. We took her everywhere, took her to wineries. From a little girl, Benedally, every Benedally, because we wouldn't leave her alone. We took her with us. And she runs the company today?

[00:59:01] She runs all three companies. And you worked with Sergio Manetti in the 70s when he founded Monteverdini. Sergio Manetti, I tasted his wine and I thought, well, this has got potential. But they were not the wines that came out later on. His regular Chianti Classico was,

[00:59:23] while it was very nice, it was a little thin. And I wanted him to do more. And we moved in that direction. And Monteverdini became an icon in his area. With the Tepega La Torte, which came out later on, we sold every case we could get hold of.

[00:59:49] And what was Sergio Manetti, who's now passed away, what was he like as a person? Oh, he was an endearing gentleman. And we had a very good relationship. He was from Milano, and a bit of a naughty individual. But whatever he did, he did it first class.

[01:00:16] The winery, his villa, the analogists. In terms of Pergola Torte, the wine, what did you notice about that wine? Maybe different from the other wines of Monteverdini. Well, first of all, it had a depth of flavor that was extraordinary. And it got it when it was young.

[01:00:35] The one didn't have to wait for months and months and months. It was almost immediate. So for restaurants who put it on their restaurant list, they loved it because it was approachable, it was elegant, and it was different. It was a Super

[01:00:54] Tuscan. And I named it. And that's when I came up with, oh, this is a Super Tuscan. And without even thinking that someone would pick it up. It was with Monteverdini. And I was asked by Sergio Manetti, what did I think of the wine? I said,

[01:01:24] Sergio, I said, it's a beautiful, beautiful wine. But I don't see Chianti Classico written. He said, well, it's not 100% Chianti Classico. I said, well, that's interesting. So what do we

[01:01:41] call it? And I said, Super, Super Tuscan. It came out like that without any thought about what I said, because I was thinking about how I'm going to market the wine. And that's how it all started.

[01:01:59] Another very famous Tuscan winery that you brought in in the early days was Sassicaia. They were going not many years when we took them over. And what was that relationship like? Well, I worked with the Baron, who was the first cousin of Antinori. And

[01:02:24] I liked his wine. I liked the whole story of Sassicaia. And it wasn't an easy sell originally, because people would say, if we want to sell Bordeaux, we'll buy Bordeaux. So it took a while

[01:02:40] to convince them otherwise. But that was the first days of Sassicaia. But having said that, we're up around 1,500 cases of Sassicaia. And we moved around California and different places once it started to pick up steam. You would have known Giacomo Tacchis then?

[01:03:01] Oh yeah. Yep. And what was he like as a person? Very knowledgeable, very academic in his approach. Giacomo Tacchis was idolized by a lot of people around Italy. He was a no-nonsense gentleman. He knew a lot about

[01:03:24] what he was doing. So we got on very well because I talked mostly about the quality and not about how to make the wine. He was a Piemontese, so he knew a lot about the Nebbiolo, but he fell in love with Sangiovese. And he turned Tuscany upside down.

[01:03:48] You worked with some of the people who became the most famous consultants or consulting analogists. So you worked quite a bit with Franco Bernabeu. You worked a bit with Giulio Gambelli. You worked with Vittorio Fiore. You represented wines that were made by Giacomo Tacchis and then

[01:04:04] Castelli as well. So that's pretty much most of the big names of that era of Italian red winemaking. And how would you compare those people or contrast those people? They were different. One was more elegant than the other, perhaps. One had more depth than the

[01:04:22] other. You got to remember that Italian owners were very nationalistic about their wines. So you couldn't really go off too far to the right or left. You had to keep the integrity of the area.

[01:04:41] But if Tacchis got involved, he would introduce Cabernet or Merlot into some of those, which he did at Antinori. And it changed the whole prospect of where Tuscany was going. What did you think about that kind of emerging? Because you worked with two different directions

[01:05:05] of wine. You worked with all Sangiovese pergola torte, doing that direction. And then you worked with blending Cabernet and Merlot with Sangiovese. And both of those things were kind of

[01:05:18] taking off at the same time. Because as we both know, Chianti used to be a blend. And so it was a blend of many grapes and what was happening was some different ideas. So that was kind of

[01:05:29] groundbreaking at the time. And both of those have since found financial success, but it must have been interesting to see what was happening. Years ago when we started, the Chiantis were made

[01:05:40] with white wine also. They had a lot of the white wine in them, 20-30 percent to get the volume. But what they didn't realize, they diluted their wine. So Chianti for me needed a lot of help.

[01:06:00] And I think I was instrumental in doing that with the growers, telling them, I need more body, I need more depth in the wine. A lot of people were adding Cabernet Sauvignon to get more color. Although they didn't have to, they could get it from their own grapes,

[01:06:20] which they're doing today. But there weren't too many wines that had Cabernet like Sashicaya. Today a lot of people have emulated or tried to emulate Sashicaya. And then Merlot was very much

[01:06:39] part of that whole area. I think everybody wanted to be a Petrus. They started planting Merlot and then the blend of Merlot with Cabernet. And then Antinori planted a lot of Merlot. Something else that happened in that time would have been Barrique use. People were

[01:07:02] changing cooperage a lot and bringing in French Barriques. Some people were using them. I think Antinori probably started earlier, but I was bringing them in through Burgundy, through Brecci Wasserman. Brought in quite a few shipments.

[01:07:20] I sold them to Montevittini. And I used to buy a lot of secondhand barrels. But I got one shipment that was high in volatile acidity. And that was it. I said,

[01:07:37] you're either going to get to know this industry on a different level or leave it to other people. So after about one year, I decided not to do it anymore. So just getting new barrels then?

[01:07:51] For some of the wines, I didn't want to use new barrels. Because a lot of the wines couldn't take new barrels. They didn't have the depth to support the flavor of a new barrel. The only ones that did were Sashicaya, Teninello, Onalayo, who had Cabernet in their wines.

[01:08:13] They did well with new barrels. But a lot of Italians used barrels because they didn't want to spend the money on a new barrel, because they were expensive. There would have also been a move among certain wineries to go from either concrete or large wood or chestnut?

[01:08:36] An evolution that took place. And I think Sashicaya was one of the leaders in that revolution. And then Antinori, of course, that was his analogist. Together they created a whole different look on Tuscany. And then everybody came and bought properties, and Tuscany became a very

[01:09:01] important wine region. Still is. And for us, it was a very important region. And they have so much wine available even today that's not sold. You can actually do whatever you want in Tuscany.

[01:09:20] So the quality depends on what you're after. Do you want all Sangiovese? Do you want the Sangiovese-Cabernet-Mélo blend? They all have them now. But when I started, nobody had them except Sashicaya and I guess Antinori. So Piero was a great instigator in the quality wines of Tuscany.

[01:09:47] And then in Sardinia you worked with Sant'Ari and you helped them develop Sardinia, right, which is a blend? So my trip down to Australia that particular year, I start to love a lot of the Syrah. It was coming out of South Australia, around Adelaide.

[01:10:08] And I couldn't believe they were big wine, too big for me, but they had the alcohol and the tannins to support each other. There was nothing flimsy about those great big wines. Even though they had 14% alcohol, they had the acidity and the tannin structure

[01:10:34] to make these wines into something great. So I drank a lot of them, understood a lot about the Syrahs. And when I came back to Italy, down to Sant'Ari, I told Antonello,

[01:10:55] is it possible I could have Giacomo Tacus? Is it possible he could be here on one of the days that I'd like to visit? So he called and the guy said, absolutely. Because he knew me. He knew what

[01:11:11] we'd done in the Piedmont. He knew that I loved wine, so he wanted to meet me. And so he was very willing to come. And I said, you know, Giacomo, if I may call you Giacomo, I didn't feel I was that

[01:11:29] much older than he was, or much younger, I should say. I said, I want to take one of the 100% Carignano from the old vineyards, and I want to blend 10 to 20% of Syrah. He said,

[01:11:52] why do you think we have Syrah? I said, I know you do. He said, you're right. And he said, but why do you want to use Syrah? I told him, I said, extra flavor,

[01:12:08] extra depth of color. Because I said, Americans love color. And those were the days when you had a lot of color in your wine. So we set out that year, this would have been in March, April. And the harvester came up, we put together a Carignano,

[01:12:36] and we started to blend. Did we settle on 20? No. We tried 15? No. Then we went to 10. And then we both said to each other, that will depend on the vintage. Is it going to be 10?

[01:12:58] Could be 12? Or 8? And he was a master blender. I said, well, Giacomo, that's up to you how you see that. I said, what I tasted, if I see the balance that I'm looking for, that's what I'm after. So Shedana was born from 100-year-old vineyards.

[01:13:25] We came out with the first vintage, I think was 1986. And it took a few bottlings to get that right. I remember Parker tasting it, and Bob said, it's a 90 plus, or an 89 plus. So the next time we went down to see Parker, we tasted the same bottle again.

[01:13:59] And he said, boy, has this changed for the better? He said there's more balance, more integrity of the grape, blah, blah, blah. And that's when he gave it a 91. So we had a lot of interest. But the problem is, or was, still a little bit today,

[01:14:25] the region of Sardinia was not that well known. Tacos, it was Tacos, and he was known for Sacicaya and Tignanello, et cetera. He wasn't really known for Sardinian wines until later on.

[01:14:45] So the consumer found it hard to put their arms around wines from Sardinia. But boy, when they finally did, they realized, holy heck, these are incredible wines. So you imported a number of wines from the Piemonte in the north. And one of the key

[01:15:10] relationships that you made was with Beppe Cola of, at that time, Pronoto. One of the very first relationships, well, the first winery we represented was Valchietti. And then we met Beppe Cola just by going to the Piemonte and off and then appreciating the great

[01:15:34] wines of Beppe. And I became not that close, you don't get close to Piemontese, especially if you're telling them how to make his wine, which I didn't do. But I knew where he was,

[01:15:54] you know, he was not an easy guy. And his knowledge was a lot more vast than mine. So I wasn't about to get in an argument about what Nebbiola was, ought to be, or should be. So Beppe, we were friends for many years.

[01:16:17] You represented Pronoto in the United States. Oh yeah. Beppe Cola used to make the wine at Pronoto and then when that winery... Oh he was, he owned Pronoto. And when that winery was sold to Antonori, they started Podericola with Tino. And you represented Podericola. Yeah, that's correct.

[01:16:38] What are your memories of Beppe Cola who's now since passed away? A great, great wine man. A great intellectual about the Piemonte. You couldn't argue with him about the Piemonte. He'd just slap you right down. If you wanted to know anything that was important about the Piemonte,

[01:17:01] you could ask Beppe and he would tell you in depth his thoughts about it. Which clones that they should... But you know a lot of that knowledge when I started in the Piemonte in the early 70s, nobody knew about the clones. He did, but it wasn't common knowledge.

[01:17:29] He seemed like somebody who was open to sharing his knowledge, open to talking, you know, because some Piemontese don't like to share what they know. Oh, they're notorious for it. They're very proud of what they have. They don't want to share with... They wouldn't even travel together.

[01:17:49] Did you speak with Beppe Cola about learning to taste Barolo wines? No, I think I had enough experience in approaching young wines, drinking a lot of Burgundy and Bordeaux. But the Piemonte's wines had more acidity.

[01:18:08] So I had to learn about that. And then the racking of a wine, don't taste it, they're just racked. Beppe was anal about all of that. All of that. I learned a lot from him, there's no question. He was my mentor from the Piemonte.

[01:18:29] An example of a winery you still work with today that you found in the early days from the Piemonte was Inardi. Yeah, Inardi, we started way back with the 71 vintage. I remember drinking it in a restaurant in Alva, and I went right to the winery,

[01:18:53] and the owner, Inardi, who wasn't really there. So I had to deal with the oenologist, and he would release wines when the last vintage was sold out. Because I said, when can I have this 71? He said, when the others sell out. I said, oh, that doesn't fit my

[01:19:21] needs right now. Because 71 was a famous year. 71, yeah. 71 was a great vintage. It was left too long in wood in the end, but we got the best of the vintage bottled for us before they went into that phase. You also worked with Maccarini when Alvio Cogno was there.

[01:19:47] Maccarini was one of the very first wineries. Alvio Cogno. Wines were different than the others. They were much easier to drink. The vineyards were a little lower, so they didn't have the high acidity of some of the others. He was an unbelievable oenologist. Alvio,

[01:20:11] have you ever met Alvio? He died before I could meet him. Yeah. We had a very good relationship, and he was very passionate about the area, his wines. You know, made these beautiful wines. We sold them very well to the best restaurants.

[01:20:34] People just loved the wines when they tasted them. They made a lot of friends. What about the pricing of Gaya wines? Well, it didn't faze me. I remember the Barbaresco was 2,900 lira a bottle. I'll never forget Angelo coming into the office, which he did periodically,

[01:21:06] and he'd sit with Maria to go over the prices of the next vintage or whatever. And I had the Sassicaia page open. He looked and he said, oh shit, I'm going to put my prices up. And Sassicaia was 3,500, and Angelo's wine was 2,900. So it immediately went up to 4,000.

[01:21:35] And you know, Americans are hard. We can't deal with that. But they did. Every increase that we got from Angelo, we sold every bottle that we could. I think we were around 11,000, 12,000 cases of all of his expensive wines. Not the Dolcettos, not the less expensive,

[01:22:02] not that he had. He was interested in what I was interested in, selling top quality, expensive wine. I don't love overblown wines personally, but I know a lot of people do.

[01:22:22] And I like to eat food with my wine. I don't want the wine to be king over the food. It seems like the American consumer changed a lot during the period of time when you were

[01:22:37] selling Italian wine. It seems like much more interest from a broad range of people into Italian wines. Well, that was, we started with Angelo in 1974, I think it was. And we had Angelo

[01:22:57] until the year 1999 or something like that. Do you think he brought a lot of attention to Italian wine? Well, they'd call them gaggia when I took them around. The wines were too expensive.

[01:23:14] Oh, we can't sell that, it's too expensive or whatever. And I said, well, taste the wine first, because these are some of the top wines of Italy. And they couldn't believe what they were tasting.

[01:23:31] The trouble was really not there. The trouble was on a restaurant list. People weren't prepared to pay in those days, $75 for a bottle of wine. And they were only paying 15. So there was a period

[01:23:51] where Piedmont was overpriced according to the consumer. And what was he like at that time? This is the 70s. He was always full of energy, massive amount of energy. He was ready to get up if it was

[01:24:09] four o'clock in the morning, he'd be there. Also his knowledge of the Piedmont was awesome. He knew what he was doing with his analogist, Agriro Ravella. The wines were different. They were different than the other Piedmontese. He was blending in all in a good sense, not

[01:24:34] blending foreign grapes. Everything was from the Piedmont. And he became quite famous. Then he opened up and started to import, one of which was Sassicaia, he represented in Italy. You know, everything has a price. But we enjoyed selling expensive wines. We're known for selling

[01:25:04] expensive wines. We weren't afraid to sell expensive wines because we were dealing with top restaurants. So somebody else that was a little bit different that you worked with was Ludovici of Fiorano in Lazio near Rome? Yeah, he was a strange guy to work with. I loved his

[01:25:27] wines, which were Cabernet and Merlot. We sold them here and there, but we had to pay for the wine even before we got them, which didn't suit me. But it worked for a little while and I

[01:25:42] just gave up. He would do things like send you whatever he wanted basically? Oh yeah, yeah. He would order a 74, 72 or 71 and he'd send me whatever he wanted. Some other things. Yeah.

[01:25:58] You know, I have a little bit of a Fiorano obsession. I really like those wines a lot and there's not a lot of information about the wines. Their wines are very elegant, very French

[01:26:09] and around the hills of Rome. So the hillsides were not too high, not too low. Yeah, those were, I think we only had them for a couple of years, but every time I wanted to order he'd say, okay, well when the money arrives, we'll place the order.

[01:26:31] And he made Semillon? That's right. He made a beautiful Semillon, but those were not in the people's interest to import then. Yeah, there's so many wines in Italy that are wonderful and nobody knows about them. He was known for his high price.

[01:26:56] You're going to buy that or could you buy a Bordeaux for the same price? Because he had also the red with Merlot in it. Yeah. Oh yeah. Well, that was the interest I had. You mostly sold the red. The reds were wonderful. Did you ever visit?

[01:27:14] I did. Yeah, what was that like? You know, I don't remember too much about it because he was a very austere kind of a person. You couldn't really talk to him about anything. He had his own agenda and he would give you five

[01:27:32] minutes and then say, I've got to go. I'm not sorry we lost them or we gave them up. I'm sorry for the quality of the wine that we represented because it was the only wine at that

[01:27:48] area that we had. So you also brought in Poggio Antico and Brunello, right? Yes, we did and very successful. We sold everything we could get. Their wines were a little different than the others, but very individually different. We did very well with Poggio Antico.

[01:28:09] I always thought that they were pretty approachable. There was a softness but also structure, which is unusual to find both. Yeah, they were very approachable and people loved them on first sip. Easy to sell, they got good scores. So we had Fulili, Costanti and Poggio Antico.

[01:28:37] And when Poggio Antico sold to this Belgian company, but we'd separated before that because they went on their own with a company in New York, I can't think of the name now. Yeah, you hate to lose anything.

[01:28:55] And that was a winery that we built up and they sold it because of the volume they were doing and also the distribution that we had set up. It kind of feels like that's been hard for you personally when that's happened.

[01:29:15] Sometimes it's hurt you at a personal level. They knew we had a lot of success and they knew we made money because we were exporting out of Italy. And for some reason, a lot of the growers thought that money ought to be in their pocket. Can't blame them.

[01:29:37] But I didn't agree. Didn't happen a lot, but it did happen. Didn't happen a lot, but it did happen. If I go back over the years, some of those growers failed to keep up with the quality

[01:30:03] level of distribution that we had, all with a distributor that they shouldn't have been with. You learn by your mistakes and they thought they could do better and they would have the 15 or 20% that we were making on the wine, they would put it in their pocket by keeping

[01:30:29] the same price to their new distributor. A new importer, I should say. I have no problem people going on their own. If we're not doing the job, so be it. Do it on your own and good luck. But good luck didn't happen to all the people that left.

[01:30:57] What were some of the more difficult moments in your career? Well, in the early days, we were shipping a lot of wine to California and the importer was not paying his bills.

[01:31:16] So we had, I think one and a half million dollars out that would have put us under had I not collected. So I decided to go down to visit him. I couldn't talk to him on the phone. He was a very, very proud Republican too, as I remember.

[01:31:48] He would belong to the famous club in San Francisco. We had a beautiful relationship. So dealing with him was a little difficult. It was either my way or the highway. So I went down to see him and we sat down and we worked out a plan.

[01:32:12] Because he said, if you put me into bankruptcy, you're not going to get paid. I said, well, why would you think I'd put you into bankruptcy? He said, you'd be like everybody else. I said, well, I'm not like everybody else. I like your company.

[01:32:36] I like your interest in wine, your passion for wine. And I saw the potential. So we got it all cleared up and he paid down the containers and then he started to order new containers and that was great. We did a lot of business with him.

[01:33:02] What do you think the important developments were for Italian wine between, say, the 1970s and the 2000s? Quality. Absolutely quality, presentation, awareness. They were major factors. And then, you know, I think we were part of that, bringing in wines that were unknown

[01:33:32] and people say, wow, this is from where? And you'd tell them and, you know, they picked up a lot of interest in our portfolio. We didn't sell volumes like we would have liked to because it was etching new ground for the importer, for the growers.

[01:34:01] They didn't quite understand. They thought anything would sell in America because of the volume of people. That doesn't work like that. You know better than I, restaurants, they don't want things on their list that don't move.

[01:34:17] But that's even changed now where they're much more open to putting other wines on the list. So there's an evolution going on still around the world. But I think above all, it's the quality of wine that has been improved tremendously.

[01:34:37] Quality always is the one that's going to last. I still believe it today and it's still true. It's all about quality. Neil Emsen saw the potential for Italian wine in America. Thank you very much for being here today. Thank you. Neil Emsen is the founder of Emsen & Co.

[01:35:01] All Drink to That is hosted and produced by myself, Levi Dalton. Editing and sound design by Alessandro Santoro. Aaron Scala has contributed original pieces. Editorial assistance has been provided by Bill Kimsey. The show music was performed and composed by Rob Moose and Thomas Bartlett.

[01:35:18] Show artwork by Alicia Tanoian. T-shirts, sweatshirts, coffee mugs and so much more including show stickers, notebooks and gift wrap are available for sale if you check the show website alldrinktothatpod.com. That's I-L-L drinktothat P-O-D dot com which is the same place you'd go to sign up for

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[01:35:54] that's super important to see every episode. And thank you for listening. Sometimes people have experiences where they almost die but you've actually had several of them where you had close encounters with death. One of those times was when you were in the Bahamas and a boat rapidly capsized.

[01:36:30] It didn't really capsize, it just sank. We hit a reef. Well, first of all, we were in a hurricane. The hurricane was coming in from Cuba directly to hit the Bahamas.

[01:36:48] So all the flags went up, no boating, you can't go out and I was at the Pilot House Club which is a boating club. And the flags around four o'clock came up green because the hurricane had turned around and started heading northeast or northwest, I think it was.

[01:37:13] So we all went out, everybody's happy to go out yachting and I went out in a beautiful a beautiful Hirschhoff, 1918 Hirschhoff. And it was 70 feet long and 62 feet underwater, I think. Had a long bow spread and transom.

[01:37:43] And we were out just sailing around and with no destination, special destination other than having a nice day and then come back. Around five o'clock, the hurricane turned around and start heading north or northeast and we're in the middle of it.

[01:38:12] So the guy didn't have any deep sea anchor, he didn't have a deep sea anchor and he didn't have charts covering all the reefs in the Bahamas. And he was from New York, Long Island and the boat was called the Blue Smoke.

[01:38:37] And so he'd come down to Florida and he lived in Miami at that time. And it was a terrible, a terrible thing that happened because he didn't know where we could go without a deep sea anchor. You don't have many choices. So had to head home.

[01:39:01] Had to head home. And the rain, the wind, the winds were up around 90 miles an hour. It was a beautiful boat, the Blue Smoke. It was a Hirschhoff and great sailing boat, a boat that was also they used for the Bermuda, New York Bermuda race.

[01:39:27] So it was quite a famous boat. So it handled the seas well and we had huge swells. And coming back in, all of a sudden I saw the lighthouse coming in front of us. I said, whatever, I can't remember his name, put the boat in reverse.

[01:39:51] We're going to hit a reef. Didn't hold. Didn't hold. We're on top of the reef. We drew 10 feet of water and we're in five feet of water. So the waves would pick us up, dump us. Nobody came to our rescue.

[01:40:11] Finally, after about 45 minutes, an hour, a huge wave picked us up and dumped us onto this clear water. And it sprung a garbage strake leak. A garbage strake is a waterline plank and water just poured in and we all had to get

[01:40:34] off the boat and start swimming somewhere. And I had a girlfriend with me with a rope tied around her and she was a great swimmer. The others had, there was a father, the wife, two children and the student that was with them.

[01:40:55] A student from one of the schools in Miami. And so they went off in one direction. We went off. You had to go where the currents were taking you. And I tried to swim to shore, forget it.

[01:41:15] So we gave up and just went with the flow where the waves took us. And we were nine hours later, it took us to arrive at a reef. Nine hours, nine. Nine hours with massive waves, but they weren't those. They were just swells, huge swells up to 50 feet.

[01:41:42] So I didn't think I was going to make it. I lost all recognition of everything. The land and where was I? And when I'd go under the sea, I never thought I'd come back up again sometime. Terrible feeling. And then I was really worried about the sharks.

[01:42:08] The sharks. I was worried about losing a leg. That's really what was happening to me then. Also, I think I lost my hair from the worry. But we made it on a reef and by this time the hurricane had moved on.

[01:42:31] It was moving at 13 miles an hour or whatever. And so we landed, I don't know, I guess 15 miles offshore. And the other party, they arrived on the reef also. And a fisherman picked us up.

[01:43:00] He was going out fishing, which he hadn't done for several days because of the hurricane. The hurricane warnings, et cetera. And on the way back into the pilot house, the little son of one of the owner of this ship,

[01:43:18] yacht, he said to his father, when we get back, can I go swimming? So in the swimming pool. After being eight hours, nine hours in the ocean. Remarkable. Everyone made it back okay? Everybody made it back. I bought the Boston Whaler that turned up.

[01:43:42] I bought that later on. I would have loved to bought the Blue Smoke, but they sent it to a devil's island or whatever they called it. Where in blue the hell out. And that was the end of the boat. Beautiful boat.

[01:44:01] They took the keel off because the keel was very heavy. A lot of all lead. And so they got salvage something from the boat. Otherwise there was nothing to salvage. So you went back and purchased the boat that had rescued you? Yeah. I bought it.

[01:44:20] That's my first experience with boating. I used to go out and water ski and wasn't a very important boat. It was a little Boston Whaler, a 13 foot Boston Whaler, but we enjoyed it. It was a boat. Any boat is better than no boat.

[01:44:39] What did that girlfriend say about that experience to you? The fact that you still survived, that you made it through that experience. Well, she was very instrumental in saving my life. She was an Australian swimmer, a very strong swimmer.

[01:44:55] And every time I was thinking, you know, I was going to pass. She said, no, no, no. Got to have courage. We're going to land on a reef. We're going to land on a reef.