I'll drink to that where we get behind the scenes of the beverage business.

I'm Levy Dalton.

I'm Erin Scala and here's our show today. Oh, In today's culinary world, chefs and Somaliers can reach an almost celebrity-like status.

To some extent, the world's greatest winemakers experience this too.

But historically and still today one of the most important parts of the wine business

works in the shadows and some of the most influential pallets who guide international

tastes are rarely noticed or even recognized.

I'm talking about wine merchants, specifically the founders of major import companies who make decisions about what kinds of wines they will import to their markets.

We can thank the Phoenicians and Carthaginians for being some of the earliest wine merchants, helping to spread the product

around the Mediterranean Sea. But we've come a long way from ships with their hulls stuffed

bowed astern within for us.

Carport has even allowed us to use recycled material to ship wine

instead of cutting down trees to make boxes.

There are many kinds of wine merchants.

Today, and I'm sure also throughout history,

wine importers sometimes take a passive role,

and they simply sell the wines they find as is.

These types of merchants sometimes see their jobs. They simply sell the wines they find as is.

These types of merchants sometimes see their jobs as protecting the purity of the

winemakers vision or the traditions of that particular region.

But other merchants can help define style, and this can sometimes be very beneficial.

They sometimes suggest or ask for certain kinds of wines to be made.

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