IDTT Wine 493: Neil Empson Shifted Gears Into Wine

I'll Drink to That! Wine Talk

Levi Dalton

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4.8 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 8 August 2023

⏱️ 103 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Neil Empson is the founder of Empson & Co., an exporter of wines from Italy and other countries.

Neil, who was born in New Zealand in 1939, recounts his youthful days driving fast, reselling Ferraris, and meeting with intelligence officers. He talks about meeting his wife Maria, who convinced him to move to Italy and take up the wine business there, founding a company for wine export. And he recalls his first sale of wine to the United States, a Chianti that was sold to Trader Joe's. At that time, back in the early 1970s, Neil recognized the potential for Italian wine sales in the United States. He both exported the first Italian wine labelled Chardonnay to the United States, and coined the term "Super Tuscan".

Neil discusses the changes in the market for Italian wine in the United States in the intervening decades since the 1970s. He also talks about his relationships with key Italian wine producers, such as Angelo Gaja (Gaja), Beppe Colla (Prunotto), Elvio Cogno (Marcarini), Sergio Manetti (Montevertine), Emilio Costanti (Conti Costanti), Alberico Boncompagni Ludovisi (Fiorano), Silvio Jermann (Jermann), and Ampelio Bucci (Bucci). He touches on the rise of varietal wines made with Chardonnay, Merlot, and Cabernet Sauvignon in Italy. He addresses the changes in cooperage that happened in Tuscany around the same time. Neil also discusses his relationships selling Sassicaia, discovering Poderi Luigi Einaudi, bringing Cantina Santadi Shardana to market, and his memories of oenologists like Giorgio Grai, Giacomo Tachis, and Vittorio Fiore. He also touches on Luigi Veronelli and what Neil learned from Veronelli's writing.

As the interview wraps up, Neil talks about some of the difficult moments in his career selling Italian wines for export, opening up about his feelings around producers that have left his portfolio as well as the difficulty of collecting payments.

This episode features commentary from:

Angelo Gaja, Gaja

Ampelio Bucci, Bucci

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Transcript

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0:00.0	I was a mad racer in a Ferrari and I was delivering a Ferrari that I had to
0:29.8	lease to a customer who was going to buy the car and then travel through those
0:38.6	tunnels at ridiculous speeds. We were driving along the Yordesrad at about a hundred
0:49.7	miles an hour. And the next thing I see in my rear vision mirror is Mercedes 6.3
0:57.9	Joan played some unique right behind me. So I moved up the speed. He moved up.
1:19.7	He went on for about an hour and a half but I would never let him get ahead of me. In
1:36.5	fact I drew away from him but I had to slow down again. So we'd meet again.
1:50.6	Five years later I'm now at St. Paul de Vance and Guntha Sacks was the name of the
1:59.9	gentleman that had the villa and the St. Paul de Vance and loved cars and he was
2:08.1	sitting there having a glass of champagne. It was his beautiful betterness of wife and
2:15.9	he said what's your favorite car? I said oh you have to qualify that. It's a little sedan and I
2:24.4	said well I said there's only one sedan that I would buy and that's a 6.3 Mercedes. He said
2:34.1	really. He said that's interesting. He said I have one on blocks for my son. I have put on
2:40.0	blocks a few years ago. He said yeah he said it's a great car. He said I had to race with a Ferrari
2:48.4	coming down from Milano to Genoa and I said you were in a beige Munich plate and I said
3:05.7	6.3. He said yeah how did you know that? I said because I was in the blue Ferrari that was
3:13.3	racing you and then he said oh my god he said you wouldn't give in and he said I had to
3:22.5	give in. My wife was under the dashboard and I drove into a gas station pretending I had to
3:30.1	get cast but you didn't name it. That was the end of him.
3:48.9	I'm Levy Dalton and this is all drink to that where we get behind the scenes of the wine business.
4:00.1	Neil Epson on the show today he is the founder of Emson and Co and has worked both in wine brokerage
4:17.7	and wine imports primarily with Italy but with other countries as well. Hello sir how are you?
	...

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