Profile: George Schwartz

GEORGE
SCHWARTZ • 51
• Northeast Regional Sales Manager • VIAS Wines,
New York City

BACKGROUNDER
Like many of my peers, I’ve had a checkered history. I began
working with Joe and Linda Savenor on Kirkland Street in
Cambridge, selling an odd repertoire of tuna fish, burgundy
and ice. From there, I worked for the Martignetti family in
Chelsea, convenient to where I grew up. I moved to the
flagship store on Soldiers Field Road in Brighton, worked
alongside Blake Allison, and tried to fill the big shoes of
Randy Sheahan when he left for Remy Amerique.

IS IT
LEGAL? In 1984, I
started with the Berkowitz family at Legal Seafoods. Roger
hired me to do two things: to take out Pier Four by winning
a wine spectator Grand Award Wine List, and to grow their
small import and distribution business, MRR Traders, named
after the three Berkowitz kids. Roger had been building the
wine list in-house, talking to distributors. It was perfect
timing, as many great winemakers were coming aboard to be on
Legal’s list: Richard Sanford, Dick Erath, Martin Ray, and
the Pattersons of Villa Mount Eden. I devised the floating
lists with grand computer printouts and availability. At MRR
we were representing major importers like VIAS, Winebow,
Epifani. Truth to tell, the catalogue was somewhat random
and haphazard, because Roger was influenced by a cadre of
European and American producers. We never did get that Grand
Award, but we came close. Certainly Chardonnay, Sauvignon
Blanc and German Rieslings dominated the list. But I was
tasting for wines with fish, and began looking to Italy for
interesting white grapes, like Riesling Renano and Moscato
Giallo. We were ahead of the curve on that score, and I
tried to push them onto the list as best I could.

GOLD
STAR WINES VIAS
started in 1983 with interesting people like Cy Feit, our
CEO Fabrizio Pedrolli, and Lou Iaccucci, whose Gold Star
wine shop, on the main drag in Queens, was a Mecca for wine
geeks like me and Richard Kzirian. Richard would come into
Martignetti and find the dustiest bottles and challenge me
to tell him what I knew about them. We became partners in
crime, but never worked together, and then he opened up
Violette Imports. We’d go on pilgrimages to Gold Star just
to talk to Lou, an influential maven for Italian wine who
had a great repertoire of products and command of the
business. It was not just a shopping but learning
experience, because Lou would spend hours guiding us and
showboating around the bins. He had all the collectables and
knew them intimately: every Giacosa single vineyard, Aldo
Conterno, Rinaldi, Pira, and many wonderful oddball
wines.

WINEBOW
In 199O I joined Leonardo LoCascio as Northeast regional
manager as he was starting to grow a national program in the
Northeast, Chicago and California. MRR was selling many of
his wines, so it was a natural segue. But I became stifled
as things were not moving as well as I’d liked. VIAS, at an
implosive state of expansion, became a golden opportunity
for me in 1996.

VIAS
We had a strong mission statement of developing brands in NE
that has been intriguing, successful and rewarding, if
sometimes laboriously head-banging. The Italian category
continues to be very healthy in the United States. Time will
tell now, with the dramatic fall of the dollar, but still
Italian wines capture the public’s fancy. It’s a combination
of people’s tastes plus an enduring – even escalating –
quest for quality both in vineyard and the cellars. The
South made the greatest leaps: the first wave of Nero
d’Avola was very exciting; now the bloom is off that rose,
as people are backpedaling northward to traditional areas
like Piedmont. Montepulciano, the red grape of Abruzze has
been booming over the last several years, on many levels,
from the $1O bottle to the wild ellipse of Emidio Pepe! He’s
aging in bottle without barrel conditioning, so if you buy a
case, and let it sit a decade, every bottle will be a new
experience: petillance, secondary fermentation, Barolo-like,
Amarone-like.

GREAT
GRAPES People are
not rallying to the obscure wines of the Northeast, but I
think Teroldego is a great grape with huge character. Salice
Salentino from Campania is on the money, one of the great
individual wines of the South: it drinks like a junior
Burgundy, matching Pinot Noir characteristics with
Sangiovese tonality. Cosimo Taurino was a revelation for me
at Winebow. Campania whites are hitting their stride, with
the combination of Falanghina and Greco di Tufo. Grapes,
vintages and winemakers are all stellar: our brand,
Terredora, is part of the Mastroberardino family, are
sincere, less plush, terroir-driven. Verdicchio from the
Marche, are underrated (rich, aromatic) and the Veneto’s
Soave (closely related). Vermentino has great propensity for
growth in Tuscany, a lot in the Maremma, people are blending
it more skillfully (say with Viognier) to pick up more oily
qualities with the minerality. In Northern Liguria, we see
some really good Pigato and Vermentino from around Albenga –
peppery yet balsamic-ky. From Alto Adige, we represent
Abbazia di Novicella with cult wines like the dry crisp
Kerner, as aromatic but less oily than Gewurztraminer,
Gruner Veltliner and Lagrein, both steel and
burgundy-wrapped.

YOUR
GRANDPA’S GRAPPA
The history of distillation is not yet well-documented, but
if you do enough research, you come to find that it began
around 1OOO years ago in west Asia or Egypt. Who knows what
kind of tipples they were making back then? They could’ve
been distilling fruits, grape mash, grains. Unquestionably
in Italy, the predominant zones are in the cold climate
zones – Piedmont, Veneto, Friuli – where you needed it to
fuel winter labors and kept you healthy from bugs and
bacilli. There were several hundred quality small distillers
in Italy 1OO years ago. They’d keep you healthy from amoebic
dysentery, as you move on to grandpa’s next salami! The
bottom line is you can still anywhere, though local
consumption may be only for fashion. Indigestion needs
attention, and a great grappa can be made anywhere, and
everyone to his own medicine! My new trajectory is a project
out of Sicily with a high quality distiller making
traditional grappas and eaux de vie (acquavite) from pomace,
infusions and amarena cherry liqueur.

OFF the
CHARTS We used to
represent Villa Matilde, the great Falernum producer, on
Campania’s north coast. Owner Salvatore Avellone – after one
of those grand dinners where you need a post-prandial –
served a terrific grappa of Falanghina. I asked where he
distilled it, and he said “Giovanni Poli”, a cousin of
Jacopo. I exclaimed, “Really? Why?” That’s shipping delicate
grape mash from Naples to the Dolomites! He said, “It’s a
long way, yes, and I’m thinking of making a change, because
we have a wonderful distiller in Sicily. You have to try his
Cactus Pear Eau de Vie.” It turned out to be Giovanni
LaFauci, whom I met the following year at VinItaly, being
formally introduced by the Planetas. That sip was off the
charts! Giovanni’s a fanatic: he built his first still when
he was 13, and designs and builds individual cauldrons to
best extract each type of fruit – apple, plum, cactus pear –
and to best separate the heart from the less desirable
(read: impure) ‘heads’ and ‘tails’. His artistry is just
becoming recognized, so wineries are beating a path to his
door.

PURE
MADNESS LaFauci is
so passionate about Moscato that he contracts the grape
pomace from the excellent Piedmont producer Paolo Saracco.
Imagine this trip: load the very delicate grape must in
Asti; haul by refrigerated lorry to Campania; ferry to
Messina; truck it to the distillery. It must be wet and very
fresh; if it’s a tad off you have to throw it away. So
you’re making batch distillations ’round the clock. LaFauci
has a window into the still and actually watches the vapor
separate from the mash. These products are very pure. When I
first came to the industry, Stock Guilia was one of the few
artisanal grappas available. Since then I’ve found that
there are a few people doing very high quality batch work
and rendering it in top fashion. Lafauci is one; Nannoni in
Tuscany is another, doing a lot of Brunello work for
wineries.

GLASS
HOUSES? When people
in this country look at fancy hand-blown bottles, they think
it’s schmaltzy, hoity-toity, a contrived effect, gimmickry.
Some are surely trophy items to be admired, but not
necessarily drunk. The vehicle is less important to serious
tasters, and glassware costs money, so producers today are
using more traditional bottles. Lafauci and I have decided
to go with a simple 2OOml ‘flute’ bottle (in six-pack) and
tall 75Oml (in three-pack), with wooden stoppers. The 2OOml
will have ‘softer’ presence on the back bar and lend itself
more to bartender experiment and consumer curiosity and
discovery. Mixologists have just begun to tap into grappa
and infusions, and there’s a long way to go.

SPIRIT
FAILING I don’t see
great appreciation for this category lagging far behind any
clear spirits category, such as vodkas and white rums. The
Instituto del Grappa does work both educationally and
scientifically. But there’s no real vehicle in the States to
teach people about the appreciation of grappa; that’s one
reason why I run seminars and tasting dinners like I did at
Wine Expo last year. There has even been a disparaging part
of the wine community that sees grappa as an evil spirit.
Some view the vinacce (skins, dregs, lees) as something
toxic, to be destroyed, rototilled as compost, or fed to
pigs. The problem is that some producers are sloppy, but
many have brought it to a high art that deserves to be
recognized, respected and enjoyed as we enjoy brandy,
cognac, marc.

GRAPPA
TYPES Clear grappa,
much the favorite, protects the 3OO-plus congeners in the
grapeskins. Wood’s powerful polyphenolics and tastes
(cherry, oak, apple) can add delicious adjuncts. Berta, in
Piedmont, uses second-generation Allier oak untoasted to add
creamy notes, a very hedonistic signature. Nannoni uses wood
impeccably and subtly; his grappa for Altesino Brunello
shows just a hint, more like creamy, nutty, vanillin, light
lanolin. In Nardini’s more old-fashioned riserva, the wood
is more intrusive, tasting like tobacco and cigars – these
were drunk while workers were smoking toscanos [pungent
cigarillos]! This effect is quite familiar to the Scotch
market.

INFUSIONS
Infusions are crystalline brandies – the pure distilled
essence of fruit without skin, pulp, seed, or stem. Though
they show less alcohol on the palate, they’re still 4O% to
43%. Two factors make an infusion appear mellower than a
grappa: the temperature at distillation is lower, imparting
a more rotund quality, and the base grappa is often of a
more delicate grape, such as Moscato. The first ones people
have seen in the US are camomile, licorice and Nardini’s
eye-opener, rue. My line will include lemon peel and more
startling flavors: stinging nettle, carob pod, cactus pear.
This is not limoncello, where lemon peels are steeped in
grain neutral alcohol with sugar and fermented. In this
grappa, only lemon peel is left in a neutral (red and white
grape) grappa for months.

LIQUEURS
They’re gaining strength here in Massachusetts, with newly
rediscovered Absinthe, Saint Germain’s elderflower,
Nardini’s Acqua di Cedro (made most unusually from oil of
cedro lemon leaves). I’ll be showing one of Amarena
cherry.

SIP THIS
at HOME As a bridge
between the heart of a dining experience to a grand finish,
grappa tasting requires thought, experiment and showmanship.
Chefs are using them in dressings, dips and saute pans;
dessert chefs add them as color to cakes and strudels;
they’re making their way onto dessert cart drink lists,
whether in fancy hand-blown or functional bottles. It’s
important to get the serving temperatures right: liqueurs at
45º, clear grappa and infusions at 5Oº, wood-aged
at 6Oº. You really need bonafide grappa glasses with
out-turned rims to fully express the intense aromas. But you
can get by – in a pinch – with a sherry copita or prosecco
glass (mini-Champagne flute).

GRAPPA
GENERATIONS The
artisanal grappa scene seems to be drying up because the
younger generation is losing interest in distilling. This
may become a prevalent situation when there’s no family
member to take over distilling. This happened recently at
Franco Barbaro’s Tastevin, a beautiful distillery in
Monbriccelli in Asti that did great contract work for
wineries. When Franco died, his sons sold the distillery.
Because of my interest and feeling for grappa, some
producers have asked me to come over and make their
distillations! I probably sell more of San Leonardo’s grappa
than wine. But I don’t want to be in that vapor world,
moving pomace around; it’s not my scene.