Michigan Avenue - Niche Media - Michigan Avenue magazine is a luxury lifestyle magazine centered around Chicago’s finest people, events, fashion, health & beauty, fine dining & more!
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A fence lizard clings to a velvety cluster of Cabernet Sauvignon grapes, his blood still too cold to manage much movement in the foggy Napa Valley morning. With the September sun yet to burn off the clouds, the sky is a giant soft box, bathing the vines at Chimney Rock Vineyard in a diffuse glow. The lizard shifts languidly to the backside of the grapes as a hand plucks a nearby bunch. John Terlato pops one of the grapes, no bigger than a blueberry, into his mouth and uses his teeth to peel back the skin from the sweet flesh. John, who owns the vineyard with his father, Anthony, and brother, Bill, has flown in from their Chicago headquarters in advance of the crush, making sure these particular grapes are worthy of becoming a Terlato wine. He spits the seeds into his palm and examines them while his taste buds search out the complexities in the fruit and the nuances of the soil. They're also straining to taste something else: greatness. Later, as John makes his way down the hill to the vineyard's cask storage facility, he and Doug Fletcher, his head vintner, are deep in conversation about whether 2012 will be a good year. They arrive at a Tomahawk Cabernet that was barreled last week. John plucks the stopper from the cask and uses a 50-year-old pipette to flood a wineglass with the ruby liq- uid. There's a lot riding on this wine, the same way there's a lot riding on a baseball team's regular-season games on the way to winning the World Series. If they want to bring home the pennant, they have to do this right every single time. This is one of the wines, the family hopes, which will cement the Terlato name as one of the best in the world. He lifts the glass to his nose and breathes. THE RISE OF AN EMPIRE T his year marks the 75th since the family's patriarch, Anthony Paterno ( John's maternal grandfather), opened a wine shop at Grand and Western Avenues on Chicago's West Side during the Great Depression. Paterno's daughter, Josephine, would later marry Anthony "Tony" Terlato, who had followed his father from the jam-packed storefronts of Brooklyn to Chicago to open a wine store of their own, Leading Liquor Marts at Clark Street and Ridge Avenue. Tony's store was just across the border from Evanston, which had been a nexus of the temperance movement. That turned out to be a smart move; those who couldn't get their spirits in the college town found Leading Liquor to be a handy location. But that was just one aspect of the Terlato business savvy. At the time, the self-serve mar- ket was wide open. But the hitch was that wine wasn't a desirable beverage in the dining realm. Coffee was the drink of the day. That would all change, thanks in part to Tony. In the evenings, he would bring home bottles of quality wine to accompany Josephine's meals. He tasted them blindly, over and over, honing his palate. As Tony's own appreciation was developing, so was Chicago's. He soon left the liquor store to join his father-in-law's distribution company, Pacific Wine Company, which had grown out of that original West Side storefront. Beginning as a suited and cuff-linked sales- man, Tony first courted run-down liquor shops before shifting to restaurants and trying to teach maître d's about the harmony between fine wine and gastronomy. It's a leap through 50 years of innovative business tactics, but Tony and his father-in-law grew their company from a simple bottling and distribu- tion house to an international importer. They became one of the most influential traffickers of fine wine in the United States, and in the 1980s Tony was almost single-handedly responsible for bringing Italian Pinot Grigio to America. All the while, he was spending a considerable amount of time getting to know the great names in wine. He spent portions of his honeymoon learn- ing from Robert Mondavi, who planted a seed in his mind about one day owning his own vineyards. He was fortuitously seated next to wine writer and entrepreneur Alexis Lichine at a dinner party in New York. Eventually, he would become close friends and partners with Michel Chapoutier of the famous Rhône family of vintners. Though his father-in-law was more inter- ested in profit margins and supply and demand, it was as if Tony had found his way into a different echelon altogether—a world where "quality" was the secret password. Informing every decision he made was an unyielding desire for the best wines, and not just because they were nicer on the tongue. It was because he firmly believed in their business value. "If you do business because of price, someone will come along with a better price and steal your business," Tony says on a September afternoon, sitting in the parlor of Terlato Wine Group's Lake Bluff headquarters, a 61-room Tudor Gothic mansion built in 1916. Empty wine bottles, signed by their famous drinkers, are arranged neatly around the estate. A picture, made with wine as the paint, depicts Tony and his smiling sons. "Quality," he adds, "is hard to take away." PERFECTING THE PALATE T " If you do business because of price, someone will come along with a better price and steal your business. Quality is hard to take away."—TONY TERLATO hat's not to say it's all about business. At the root of every boardroom decision Tony makes is a prodigious sense of taste, an unabashed passion for the way risotto plays with quail and porcini mushrooms, or the feel of a Gagliole Pecchia Rosso on the gums. Taste is such a central concept to the Terlato family that Tony even penned a memoir dedicated to it: Taste: A Life in Wine—known simply as "The Book" to his sons, employees, and friends. Each year, he hosts a legendary white- truffle dinner at $500 a plate. Nonna Giarusso, his deeply Italian grandmother, who rarely cooked from a recipe and was famous for her veal cutlet, informed Tony's taste. He founded a fine wine and food society that includes some of Chicago's most influential busi- nessmen, musicians, and surgeons. It's called The Renaissance Club, and only 30 people are allowed membership, because that's the number that makes for the most epic dinner party. At a recent meal, a six-course soirée at Pelago Ristorante off Michigan Avenue, Tony's discern- ing palate was in full form. Chef Mauro Mafrici MICHIGANAVEMAG.COM 109 PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY OF TERLATO WINES INTERNATIONAL (1955, 1970)