the vine that binds // michigan avenue magazine (december 2012)

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features 102 Stronger than Ever

Cover star Jennifer Hudson talks with

fellow singer Kelly Rowland about

motherhood, stardom, and leaving

the past behind.

Photography by Robert Erdmann/August

106 The Vines That BindTerlato Wines has its headquarters and family

roots in Chicago, vineyards in Sonoma, and

its ambitions set on attaining perfection.

By Seth Putnam

Photography by Tim Klein

114 The Nutcracker Business

Take a peek behind the

curtains at the Joffrey’s

production of this

beloved classic.

By Kerry Reid

Photography by

Jeff Sciortino

120 Go for the BoldThe season’s most

luscious jewels set a new

gold standard.

Photography by Brian Klutch

Styling by Laurie Brookins

December 2012/January 2013

114 The Nutcracker BusinessAnastacia Holden performs the part of Clara in the Joffrey’s Nutcracker.

18 MICHIGANAVEMAG.COM

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A view from the hills of Chimney Rock Winery, the Terlato’s vineyard in Napa Valley.

106-113_MA_FEAT_Terlato_DecJan13.indd 106 11/20/12 10:49 AM

John Terlato tastes wine from the barrel to test the complexity of his new vintage.

MICHIGANAVEMAG.COM 107

The Terlato family can trace their roots in the wine business back to Chicago’s West Side during the depths of the Great Depression.

Seventy-five years later, this prominent family of vintners has enjoyed great success, yet is still striving for perfection.

BY SETH PUTNAM PHOTOGRAPHY BY TIM KLEIN

THE VINES THAT BIND


Chairman of the 1970 Columbus Day Parade, Anthony Terlato with his sons, Bill and John, and Mayor Richard J. Daley.

John Terlato tastes grapes straight from the vine to check their harvest readiness.

The Chimney Rock estate was built in the Cape Dutch-style of South Africa.

Anthony Terlato and his father, Salvatore, at their retail shop in 1955.



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 EMPIREThis 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 PALATEThat’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 PH

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“ 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



had just delivered a spectacular beef tenderloin in black-truffle sauce, and

Tony had selected the wine: a 1997 Gaja Costa Russi. He comes alive when it

hits his lips. “The wine we had before this was a very good wine,” he says,

referring to the Gagliole Pecchia. “But this? This is a firecracker. You feel it

up to your eyeballs!”

The same unbridled enthusiasm is so apparent in his sons that you can

almost see Nonna’s wooden spoon stirring the pot through the genera-

tions. On any given evening, John might present his three children with a

dozen different burger varieties and ask them to blindly rate them.

During a conversation with a friend about her favorite store-bought

tomato sauce, John told her: “I can do better.” He came back with his own

version (again, blindly tasted against 25 supermarket brands). It was so

good that he now jars the sauce and distributes it to a group of close

friends by invitation only.

MODERN TASTEMAKERSNow, with a third generation of Terlatos primed for the ascendancy, this

renowned taste shows no signs of disappearing—and that’s exactly the way

Tony wants it. If there’s one thing he prizes above his appetite and his busi-

ness success, it’s his family’s legacy. When he talks about the future, it’s

about how he’s going to become the modern equivalent of the old-world

names that have been making storied wine for centuries. “The people we

did business with talked in generations,” Tony muses. An oil painting of

himself hangs above the fireplace. He pauses before adding, “In America

in the 1950s, there weren’t many generations. But in Europe there were

families in the wine business for 29, 30 continuous generations. You would

see the portraits. And I’m thinking, how do I get to be 40 generations?”

Tony has already locked in his name as the American father of Pinot

Grigio and as the visionary leader of the business empire that transformed

the US wine industry. But he’s not satisfied. He wants to leave behind a

significant American wine—one that stands shoulder to shoulder with the

Mondavis, the Gajas, and even the Rothschilds and Contis.

His sons, Bill and John, share these dreams as they sally forth into the new

era. “The legacy my dad, my brother, and I want to leave is as winemakers,

despite what we’ve done as importers and distributors,” John says.

FRUITS OF THEIR LABORIn an almost providential turn of events in 1996, Tony fulfilled what Mondavi

had predicted 40 years before. He bought Rutherford Hill, one of the first

vineyards to introduce American-grown Merlot to the marketplace. In his

first meeting with his winery’s staff, Tony walked into the room with a stack

of magazine covers from Wine Spectator. He had Photoshopped a bottle onto

them with a headline that read “#1 Merlot in Napa Valley.” The date in the

corner was five years into the future.

“I said, ‘I’ll give you five years, or you’re gone,’” Tony remembers. “They

got us good numbers, but not good enough, so they were gone.” He fired

and replaced his entire staff.

Over the next several years, they acquired more vineyards: Alderbrook

in Sonoma, Sanford in Santa Barbara, Terlato in the Russian River Valley.

But one of the jewels came in 2000 when they purchased Chimney Rock,

nestled in the Stags Leap District, a narrow strip of land three miles long

and a mile wide, widely acclaimed for its favorable conditions for growing

Cabernet Sauvignon. In the famous Judgment of Paris in 1976, it was a

wine from this region that edged out the old-world Bordeaux and clinched

an American victory in a red.

“What’s happening in Napa right now is what happened in Burgundy,”

explains Fletcher. “People are recognizing that not every spot is great for

every wine.” The Terlatos are reverential when they talk about the volcanic

soil of this hallowed ground. They nod to the terroir, a French expression for

the role land plays in the taste of its produce. For Chimney Rock, this is espe-

cially pronounced in its Tomahawk Cabernet, which is grown on just one plot

of eight acres out of the vineyard’s 130 and deemed so good that it shouldn’t be

mixed with grapes from anywhere else. “You can drill down into California,

then Napa, then the Stags Leap District, then the specific vineyard,” John

explains. “With Tomahawk, it’s like you’re on the head of a pin.”

So far, it isn’t just the Terlatos blowing smoke. When Robert Parker, the

man with the million-dollar nose, tasted the 2007 Tomahawk, he gave it 91

points and wrote in his tasting notes that it was “a quintessential Stags Leap

Cabernet to drink over the next 10 to 15 years.” That’s not the only Terlato

wine to catch Parker’s nose: He scored their 2007 Ganymede as a 92 and

praised its silkiness and notes of “beef blood, crushed rocks, and earth.”

The Terlatos have also zeroed in on a key demographic: young millennials,

who obsess over the story behind what they consume like no generation before

them. The family have become regular guests on Bravo’s hit series Top Chef,

and of the show’s 3 million viewers, 80 percent are under age 35. “That tells

you who’s interested in food and wine,” says Bill, who judged the season finale

A worker at Chimney Rock drives through rows of vines.



“ The legacy my dad, my brother, and I want to leave is as winemakers, despite what we’ve done as importers and distributors.”

—JOHN TERLATO


Details on the barrels in Napa, California.

Winemakers at Chimney Rock clean and fill barrels.

Bill Terlato, Michel Chapoutier, Anthony Terlato, and John Terlato raise a glass of one of M. Chapoutier’sfine wines.

Anthony and Bill Terlato at Terlato Wines International in Lake Bluff.



The Vintner’s CalendarCreating one of the world’s best wines is a task that requires the methods of a scientist, yet the sensibilities of an artist. Head winemaker Doug Fletcher unpacks some of the highlights of his year.

February: Pruning. The winemaking team carefully examines each vine, deciding which to cut and which to keep based on the year before. “The most important decision we make all year is pruning the vines because it determines the yield of the vineyard next year,” Fletcher says.March: Tasting. The anticipation in the air is palpable as the wine washes over Fletcher’s taste buds. In a given spring, he’ll sample vintages from the previous two years to get a sense of how they’ll develop. “This is your first chance to see what the wine is going to be like,” he explains. “We don’t have to worry about changing them very often because we tend to get them right in the vineyards.”July–August: Veraison, also known as ripening. “As the grapes are turning color, we’ll look for stragglers and assess how the vines are doing,” Fletcher says. “ Then it’s just waiting for the harvest.”October: Harvest. The vineyard gears up for action, with a battalion of workers ready to pick into the dead of night if the weather demands it. “The winemaking team is out every day, walking the rows and tasting the fruit, looking for the right flavors and seed maturation,” Fletcher says. “At some point over a couple of weeks, the skins will have softened enough. They’ll be less astringent, and you’ll know it’s time.”January–March: Dormancy. The term can be misleading—as the vines are resting, the work of the vintner and the vineyard staff is in full forward motion for next harvest. “I’m skiing in Telluride!” Fletcher jokes. “No, at that point we’re preparing for the process to happen all over again.”

in 2010. “What you wear, what you drive, what you eat, where you go—they all

reflect lifestyle choices. They’re seeking authentic experiences.”

High-end Terlato wines (like their headlining Episode and Galaxy blends)

are regulars in the retail division of Hart Davis Hart Wine Co., an upmarket

auction house in Chicago. There and elsewhere, there’s a marked sense of

admiration for the family’s ambition. “I just tasted the ’08 Cabernet from

Chimney Rock, and it’s a very good example of what the Terlato family is try-

ing to do,” chairman John Hart says, though he hesitates to rank any wine

without a blind tasting. “I respect them very much, and at our end of the busi-

ness, at the very top end, I can’t say that about too many people.”

NEVER SETTLINGIf simply wanting to be the best made it so, the Terlatos would be home free.

Plenty of people aspire to carve their names in history. What makes wine an

especially challenging arena is the crowd of grape-stompers who are all vying

for legend status. In a field where the gates were once shut except to aristo-

crats—people like the Prince of Conti and the Rothschilds, who own “the

king’s wine”—the doors have been blown open, and there are now more wines

on the market than ever.

Indicators like the score (on a 100-point scale) and price (cult wines like

Screaming Eagle can command thousands

per bottle) don’t always tell the full story. The

opinions of critics, too, can be brutally sub-

jective. “I really think the only difference

between a 96-, 97-, 98-, 99-, and 100-point

wine is the emotion of the moment,” Parker

told the Naples Daily News in 2007.

But Fletcher, the head vintner, isn’t wor-

ried. If the Terlatos are willing to fire one of

their previous teams, that means they’re will-

ing to outfit their current staff with whatever

tools they require to succeed. “The Terlatos

have given us a carte-blanche mandate [to]

produce world-class wines,” he says.

So Fletcher balances the vines with his pruning shears, sparing only the

grapes that will get the most efficient hydration from the stem. He clocks

the drip-irrigation, and when the time comes for barreling, he uses subtler

French oak instead of the cheaper American. He and his team have taken

apart every piece in the process like an engine, examining each piston and

gasket to see if it’s good enough. An example: At Chimney Rock, they

spent a chunk of time exploring equipment that would mimic an ancient

basket press. The process isn’t the most efficient, but it’s gentle. Modern

machinery that smashes the skins to the max could yield 10 to 12 percent

more juice, but, like squeezing a tea bag, it would also release astringent

flavors that would lower the quality of the wine. “‘This is the way we’ve

always done it’ is not a good enough answer,” Fletcher says.

Back at Chimney Rock, in the Napa Valley morning, John Terlato is twirl-

ing the Tomahawk Cabernet, splashing it high on the sides of the glass. He

inhales its aromas: hints of flowers, black currants, maybe a little cedar. Finally

he takes a sip, spreading it around his mouth and letting it coat his palate.

As John swallows, Fletcher looks him in the eye: “Not half bad, is it?” MA

“ ‘This is the way we’ve always done it’ is not a good enough answer.”

—DOUG FLETCHER

John Terlato

Barrels stored in the caves at Rutherford Hill Winery in Napa Valley.

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the vine that binds // michigan avenue magazine (december 2012)

Documents

anthony terlato

terlato family

john terlato tastes

john terlato pops

amjohn terlato tastes

chimney rock vineyard

particular grapes

seth putnam photography