18: Blake Johnson
I'll Drink to That! Wine Talk
Levi Dalton
4.8 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 24 August 2012
⏱️ 55 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Blake Johnson is a longtime New York sales representative for wine import company Rosenthal Wine Merchant.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm Levy Dalton and this is all drink to that where we get behind the scenes of the wine business. Oh, Blake Johnson on the show today. |
| 0:25.0 | on the show today. |
| 0:27.0 | Blake is a long time sales rep for Rosenthal going back to 93, |
| 0:31.0 | in terms of perspective, and somebody who knew Robert chattered in for more than just |
| 0:36.1 | the phone call and a unique viewpoint in a New York wine scene. |
| 0:40.6 | Happy to have them on the show today. |
| 0:42.4 | One of the things that I've always appreciated about you is that it was always very clear to me that you really believed in the wines that you were selling. |
| 0:50.0 | And you know, the conversation we just had about Parto is a good example of that like you know I may say |
| 0:55.3 | one thing but you're like no I'm I firmly am on the side of this wine how did you get to that |
| 1:01.4 | point where you said like these are wines that I'm all about what were some of the first experiences? |
| 1:06.2 | How did your career play out where you firmly attach the idea of the style that you might call the Rosenthal portfolio? |
| 1:15.0 | An interesting question actually in sort of a, you know, a long road. |
| 1:19.7 | I think when I first got into the business in 1980 or actively in the New York scene in 1980 is at Windows on the world and at that time they were sort of the leading, you know, wine restaurant, but they were very California driven at that time I mean I remember |
| 1:35.8 | introducing Edna Valley Shalone places like that and I would you know at that time I was |
| 1:42.4 | sort of enamored with that, you know, that big oky, full on kind of style. |
| 1:49.0 | And as more time I spent there, the more I became sort of interested in wines from like |
| 1:55.3 | Valana or Grophyay or and that's and those were the ones I started to gravitate towards that |
| 2:02.3 | wines that were, you know, really spoke of the balance and the place that they were from. |
| 2:09.0 | And by the time I left there and started working for Chatterton who had a very sort of directed French, Italian, |
| 2:17.0 | although we had a lot of Australian things where sort of the yang of the whole portfolio. |
| 2:22.0 | Oh he did? He had Australian things oh yeah |
| 2:24.1 | petaluma was there bow in a state the old brown brothers initially |
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