Profile: Jeff Cirace

Celebrating its
centennial in 2OO6, V. Cirace & Son is by far Boston’s
oldest family-owned bottle shop. (The store’s State License,
WD2, is Boston’s second oldest.) Jeff and Lisa Cirace,
grandchildren of founder Ernesto, have complemented each
other’s creative styles for over 3O years. Under their
loving guidance, V. Cirace & Son has won major awards:
the Lou Iacucci Award from the Italian Wine & Food
Institute in 1982, and market watch’s Top 1O Retailers in
1988. An august presence at the corner of North Square –
like its neighboring Paul Revere House and Old Sailor’s Home
– the shop is listed on Boston’s historic Freedom Trail.
Window and showcase display presentations are – invariably
and traditionally – first class. Sepia-tint photos, memento
bottles and memorabilia line the walls and fill polished
oak, sparkling display cases. Everything looks perfect:
browsers find no lurking bottles, outdated shelf-talkers,
dusty corners. Bins are neatly stacked, labels faced. The
scintillating Grappa display and serene Port shelf are
highlights. At Christmas especially, but all year ’round,
Lisa’s handcrafted gift baskets take stage center. It’s as
winking and lively as a presepi (Nativity scene) in a Roman
church. Behind the scenes, Jeff and Lisa plan new
strategies, import and sell wines and liqueurs, branch into
glassware and pottery – all with great elan and elegance.
What becomes a legend best? Limoncello yellow!

JEFF
CIRACE • 52 • V. Cirace & Son, Inc. •
Boston, MA

LONG
ROOTS My
grandparents Ernesto and Vincenza arrived in Boston from
Salerno in 19O4. They were from neighboring villages on the
Amalfi Coast. My grandfather was a barber at Grande’s Barber
Shop in North Square and opened a dry goods shop in 19O6. He
was the original importer of Petri Italian cigars. In those
days, Italians named their businesses after their wives, so
the business became V. Cirace after my grandmother,
Vincenza. My dad, also Ernesto, went to Suffolk Law School
and became a contracting officer for Bell Aircraft in World
War II. He met my mother while stationed in Rome, New York;
they came to Boston after the war ended. Three months later,
as tradition dictates, my grandfather went upstairs for his
lunch and nap – and never woke up. So my father and his
sister Eda took over the business. My grandfather did not
want to branch into liquor; after Prohibition bootlegging
was regarded as dirty business. They started up small with
pints and half-pints of Whiskey and Rye.

JUG
TRADE In 1953, Dad
became a distributor. Parma Wines from Lodi – four gallons
to a case – were a big part of our business. A burgundy
blend (mostly Zinfandel), a Chablis and a rose. Winemaker
John Cella was married to a Petri, whom Dad met through
importing cigars. John was eventually bought out by Italian
Swiss Colony, who was bought out by Heublein, and so it
spiraled. We did all right until Gallo came in with the
Carlo Rossi line, and then it was David vs. Goliath,
regional Parma head to head with a major national
brand.

BORN
into RETAIL From
the time I was 7, working here with my Aunt Eda, there never
was a question in my mind where my life was going. My father
and I had a great relationship, and I loved being in the
store with him. At Christmas I couldn’t wait for school
break to come down here and stock shelves, drive the truck,
sweep up with Da ’til 3 in the morning! Our wine would come
into a railroad yard at Commercial and Atlantic; we used a
little 12-foot truck to get it here. I did a lot of lifting
when I was a kid. As a high school football player I never
did weights, because I was lifting cases of Parma wine all
day long. If there was a snowstorm, we wouldn’t drive home
to Winchester. He’d take a room at the Parker House, we’d
woof down turkey clubs at 3am and be back here at 7! Our
Christmas business today is largely Lisa’s gift baskets;
back then, we’d deliver 5O cases of Scotch to a
company.

NORTH
END CHANGES We
never priced bottles. My father had a steel-trap mind, knew
the price of every bottle and its mark-up, knew how far he
could bargain, because our all-Italian customers, believe
me, would come and barter everything but their cows! This
was a busy industrial and retail area: bakeries, butcher
shops. Hanover Street was meatpacking plants. Commercial
Street was fruit and vegetables, Atlantic Avenue, all fish,
you’d trip over 5O-gallon wood barrels filled with cod and
herring. That’s how people shopped. The neighborhood began
to change when Mayor Kevin White built Faneuil Hall
Marketplace and developed the waterfront. People sold high
and moved to the ‘burbs’ – that was the American Dream. I
loved the city; my brother didn’t. He liked sailing on the
Mystic Lakes; I loved playing pimple-ball with a broomstick
right outside the door here.

FACE
the BOTTLES My
father was a stickler for organization. He always wanted the
store to be a showplace. His belief in the full package –
great selection, great service, an appealing place for
people to shop – was instilled in us since we were kids. I
tell my staff, ‘Look, I’m too old to change. When a bottle
needs to be faced off, when you see dust, you just do it
automatically.’ You’ve got to be wine savvy. You need good
brand knowledge with spirits. A customer comes in, you greet
him, offer your personal experience with selections. This
maintains my family tradition, and is what makes today’s
individual store-owner stand out among chains and club
stores.

FULL
TIME (and a HALF)
My sister Lisa and I have dedicated ourselves to this
business for many years. I quit college days and started
going nights to help Aunt Eda. I took marketing and
management courses at Bentley. Dad never pushed us into the
business. The hours were brutal: 8am to 11pm, 6 days a week.
I knew how committed I’d have to be to run a family
business. You give up a portion of your life; you see your
family less to provide service to customers. There are two
ways to make money: the smart way and the hard way. In the
old days, we did it the hard way, working 😯 to 9O hours a
week. Young people today are smarter, so they’re less likely
to commit to that regimen. To be in any retail business
definitely takes a special type of person.

GIFT
BASKETS After Aunt
Eda passed away, Lisa and I became the second generation
sister and brother act. Lisa went to Suffolk, and is very
creative. We didn’t want to be just a corner liquor shop, so
we made gift products an integral part of our business. Lisa
spends five months preparing for the next gift season,
traveling to gourmet shows to find the perfect products. We
taste wines that she matches with the foods. She finds exact
colors, themes. She’s done baskets for Neiman Marcus, Jordan
Marsh. But since we do it all in-house and don’t want to
move to a factory, we’ve cut back production to service
special customers. We’ve targeted the very high quality
segment, and mail out 1O,OOO full-color catalogs; our best
clients are recipients of baskets. It goes year ’round:
congratulations, birthdays, company incentives. We’ve done
special promotions with Toyota and Jaguar dealerships.
Lisa’s lines of Italian ceramic pottery and Murano
glassware, especially designed for aperitifs, broaden our
appeal to the spouses of wine buyers.

IMPORTING
CHIANTI Dad began
importing Italian wines 3O years ago; we sold our own
Frascati, Chianti, Lambrusco. When he died, we discontinued
that segment. Our Parma sales had dropped drastically, and
we were the first to lose our warehouse (Kendall Square, on
the Charles River) to the Big Dig. It was a great location!
So we focused on retail. That gave us huge notoriety in
Italy. When we won the Iacucci Award, Sean Connery and Gina
Lollobrigida presented the awards at the New York Marriott.
Italian wineries began asking me to consult, and soon to be
their broker.

CHARACTER
TRUMPS MONEY I met
with Bobby Epstein at Brockton Wholesale (later Premium
Beverage, now Horizon); we’d met a year earlier and were
becoming good friends. He’d come to me and asked if he could
have a shot in Boston; I gave him some business. My primary
relationships are what this business means most to me. Bobby
and I built a relationship over 2O years. He helped me
develop my brands in New England. Because of in-store
relationships, I came in contact with Brown Forman. When
they took our Sambuca brand (Oblio), the country was saying,
‘How did this little store in Boston get the country’s
biggest liquor company to take their brand?’ We had no track
record – just an idea! A gentleman who came in to thank me
for featuring Glenmorangie spotted a plastic mold of a
bottle I’d designed on my desk and said, ‘What a beautiful
package!’ My friend in Italy found a producer for
coffee-infused Sambuca, his wife came up with the name.
Anyway, Brown Forman took Oblio, ran it nationally for three
years, then gave up on it. That experience educated me in a
whole new business sector. When a decision has to be made at
Cirace, Lisa and I discuss it over Sunday family dinner, and
a decision is made. In corporate America, you’re on a
totally different plateau: there are tiers and layers of
people and decision-making. It also taught me a lot about
production: labeling, bottles, bottling lines.

BRANDING
a DIGESTIVO I get
bored easily, so I’m always looking for new projects. Lisa
and I have taken this store as far as it can go without
opening another branch, which we do not want. Lisa and I
have worked very well together for 3O years, which is some
kind of record. An old axiom for family businesses says: The
first generation builds, the second maintains and the third
destroys. Not at Cirace! We’re close, but we’re different in
personality. Lisa is creative and level-headed, I’m
aggressive and volatile. So I came back from Italy and said
to her, ‘Maybe we should try limoncello. The first year I
saw it in Rome, the next year in Verona, the third in
Milano. This stuff is everywhere!’ She said, ‘If you want to
do it, let’s try.’ She came up with the name Sogni (dreams)
di Sorrento. We designed the package. I was all set to go
back to the large distillery who made our Sambuca, had the
contract in my briefcase, when my wife Ann and I went to
Verona for Vinitaly (Italy’s premier beverage exposition)
where I was consulting for a winery. Ann’s bored and decides
to take a stroll. An hour later she’s back tugging my
sleeve. ‘Jeff,’ she says, ‘Please come with me. I just
tasted a fabulous limoncello.’ ‘Ann,’ I say, ‘we’re signing
the contract this afternoon!’ She gives me a look: ‘You’ll
kick yourself later.’ So I meet the people, taste the
product – and run to phone Lisa. She says, ‘If you’re that
sold on it, bring home samples and then you can fly back.’
So we did, and around Sunday dinner table – with Lisa, my
mother, my niece and her fiance, my family – we decided the
product was amazing: delicious, hand-crafted, on target for
our clientele. After much discussion and preparation with
Lisa, I flew back to Italy, drove to Positano and met
Maurizio Russo, the father (loved his family). His hands-on
family company makes a traditional, handcrafted product –
grain neutral spirits, lemon peel (no flavorings), distilled
water, and sugar. I brought some back, and Bobby Epstein was
receptive.

TEST
MARKETING We have a
ready-made test market in Boston. My focus group is my shop.
When old trusted customers come in, I take samples out of my
office and ask them what they think of it. They say: ‘nice
bottle!’ or ‘too bitter!’ or ‘too sweet!’ We absorb their
comments, go back and adjust the product and package. The
bottle went from square to round, blue to yellow, etched
lemon to a ring of painted lemons; the flavor went from
cloyingly sweet to intensely lemony. This is Lisa’s and my
triumph: the way my dad felt about Parma Wine. We’re in 12
markets. We’ve come out with mandarin and raspberry, 75O and
1OOml. We have tremendous distribution here and in New
Hampshire and do very well in Florida and New
Jersey.

PAST
and FUTURE As long
as Lisa and I are here, there’ll be a Cirace on this corner.
Our combination of creativity and wine knowledge have
benefited us greatly. Lisa is very food-savvy and a great
cook. There’s no fourth generation for Cirace, unless my
future grandchild may want to get into the business. We do
have continuity, three generations of family customers. Mr.
Michael Di Nardo shops here, whose father was in the Air
Force, his uncle mayor of Medford. I remember him coming in
here when he was six-years-old, his grandfather buying Parma
and his father holding his hand and yelling, ‘Don’t touch
the bottles!’ Doctors who shopped here as medical students
still come back as surgeons. But demographics have certainly
changed. I’ll bet that 95% of the Italian wines I sell today
are to non-Italians. The Italians who remain in the North
End are not about to drop $6O for a Brunello. Today we also
import Russo’s Stravino wines from Campania.

SHELF
TALKERS, REGION WALKERS
We’ve adjusted price points and focused on education, which
is very, very important. Now with a daughter of 23, I’m
trying to get North End young people involved in trying
wine. We host tastings at restaurants, similar to trade
tastings, with notes on the wines and regions. We ran one at
Lucia’s with 1O Tuscan wines for $25 (covering appetizer
costs). It gives young people a chance to taste Brunello or
Tignanello, now major investments! They might buy a Chianti
Classico for $1O, but at least they know what’s out there.
We keep a kiosk full of notes on Italian wines, region by
region; I fill it twice a month, we go through reams of
paper and have racks stocked with regional wines. I do that
so people who just want to browse can be comfortable and
learn a little without having to ask. As I get older, I feel
‘written out’ with sell sheets and shelf talkers. I’d rather
be fishing in Boston Harbor in my Whaler!

TRACKING
TRENDS Industry
trends are changing daily in tastes, networks, buyouts,
consolidations. If someone had told me ten years ago that
Seagrams wouldn’t own Seagrams 7 any more, I’d have laughed.
Never in a million years would I have thought Robert Mondavi
wouldn’t own his own label. If you’d told me that a French
vodka called Gray Goose would sell for $27.99, and they’d
sell the label for $1billion, I’d never believe you. What do
a goose and France have to do with Vodka? Yes, the business
today is exciting and fun. Look at that Absolut silhouette:
all you can think of is vodka!

ADVICE
to RETAILERS
General information is key. Web sites are very helpful. I
rarely bother a salesman for tasting notes. I go on line to
get ratings. We do a lot of pre-buy and contact good
customers with pre-arrival notices on Supertuscans or Opus
One. Distributor relations are important. You have to convey
how passionate you are about the product. When I leave sales
meetings at Horizon, nobody says that guy doesn’t believe in
this product, doesn’t love what he does. It may sound corny,
but that’s the way I was raised, and I’m too old to
change.

BRANDING
LARGE The original
owner of Ketel One came into the shop and we tasted it at
the counter – I’ll never forget it. Before that it was just
Smirnoff and Gordon’s. We saw that evolve into where vodka
is today in terms of quality and levels of sales. We were
impressed that it developed slowly, without flash – a good
sign. We’ve seen many brands that get a brief blast, then
the public says, ‘What’s this stuff with gold floating in
it?’ Sambuca Romana has done a good job in capturing the US
market.

MARKS
of RESPECT Antinori
has been an absolute leader in marketing, education and
introducing people to fine Italian wine. The Marchese di
Antinori is surely one of the market leaders. I have
enormous respect for Robert Mondavi, the man, his place in
California wine history, creativity in nurturing his brands,
and his commitment to education. Other wineries, like Joseph
Phelps, have also made world-class wines in California. The
world expansion of quality wines is fascinating: the
Southern Hemisphere has done it, and the Eastern Bloc of
Europe is next. That’s why our business is still
fascinating, exciting.

HAPPY
MEDIUM I hope our
business doesn’t become chain-driven on a national level;
then it will lose individuality, the personal touch. It
makes me nervous at every level. As a retailer, I was raised
to offer service: greeting, very wide hand-selected
inventory, helping customers shop and carry their bottles,
branded bags, a hearty ‘thank you!’ There has to be a happy
medium between the chain and the local bottle shop. We had
insight into that when we planned to turn our Cambridge
warehouse into a wine store offering gourmet foods, cooking
utensils, cooking classes, and tasting programs.

LIVING,
ITALIAN STYLE You
can tell by my profile that I love Italian food! When I go
there, I greatly enjoy sharing the passion of the producers,
the proud regionality of the people, and the heritage of my
ancestors. We’ll lunch for three hours enjoying wine, acqua,
antipasti, pasta, entrees, cheese, pastry, limoncello,
espresso. Back at the office, we work ’til six – though I’m
ready to pass out! Back to the hotel, freshen up, take a
nap, and we’re out for round two of marathon dining from 9
’til whenever ! It’s a great lifestyle, it truly is, and the
scenery is sublime. This last visit we toured the ruins of
Pompeii and the King of Naples’ amazing 5O-acre garden
estate and attended the opera at the Ravello Music Festival.
That’s what I love about Italy!