Tom Hill

A self-admitted wine geek, Tom lives in Northern New Mexico and works as a computational physicist at Los Alamos National Laboratory doing numerical neutron transport & large scale code development. He has been tasting wines since 1971, participates locally with a couple of large tasting groups in his area, and is practically a fixture at most California wine festivals, such as the Hospice du Rhône, Rhône Rangers, and ZAP. Other interests: Tom is heavily into competitive sport fencing (foil & epee), biking, cooking, basketball, skiing, backpacking, mountain climbing.

Neal Rosenthal
Susan Clough/TomHill

As wine consumers faced with a staggering array of unknown wines, we're continually seeking guidance on what to buy. In Santa Fe, we are blessed with some very knowledgeable retailers to guide our choices. Susan Egan (Susan's Fine Wine & Spirits), Jim Cook (Liquor Barn), Byron Rudolph (La Casa Sena), and Jim Stephens (Kokoman)
are amongst the best you can find anywhere...worth their weight in gold....or Chateau Latour. Sadly, this personal service is not the norm. Shelf talkers, those vexing little tags tacked beside a wine, trumpeting a Wine Spectator or Robert Parker 100-point score in big type, maybe a few glowing words snippeted out of the review; all too often now stand in for a live and present wine expert. It's a lazy way to retail wine. We usually ignore them, or are sometimes amused by their florid prose. This spreading trend of shelf talkers is one of wine importer Neal Rosenthal's pet peeves; as laid out in his new book "Reflections Of A Wine Merchant". Rosenthal was in town for September's
SantaFe Wine & Chile Fiesta; serving on a panel discussing terroir in wines and doing winemaker dinners at Amavi and La Casa Sena. One of the things we've learned over the years, when we're contemplating the purchase
of an unfamiliar European wine, is to turn the bottle over and look for the name of the importer. Good importers travel to Europe, poke around in the nooks and crannies of various winegrowing regions to scout out producers who are unknown but making distinctive wines. Names like Kermit Lynch, Eric Solomon, Louis/Dressner, Vineyard Brands
(Robert Haas), Hand Picked Selections (Dan Kravitz), Weygandt-Metzler, Jorge Ordonez, and North Berkeley Imports are some we rely upon. One of our most trusted names is Neal Rosenthal. When we stumble across some unknown wine and discover it carries that Rosenthal moniker, it's immediately plopped into our shopping cart.

Rosenthal Wine Merchants

In 1977, attorney Neal Rosenthal said good-bye to the New York corporate world and opened a small wine shop with his wife, Kerry Madigan. You can hardly say the business flourished. It was an idiosyncratic shop that focused, as best it could, on lesser known wines and Neal's firm belief in the importance of "terroir", establishing its own niche
in the crowded New York wine scene. Frustrated by the endless stream of faceless wine reps through his front door, flogging the same boring wines; Neal soon realized that to sell many of the wines he liked, he needed to import them directly from their source in France and Italy. This idea was galvanized when West Coast wine importer, Kermit Lynch, showed up on his doorstep one morning. He'd heard of Neal's "different approach" to wine retailing and shared many of Neal's frustrations at his Berkeley retail shop, spawning his own importing arm some eight years earlier. Inspired by trips to France and California in the '79-'80 time frame to visit some of his favorite producers and research new ones, Neal and Kerry launched the Mad Rose Group a few years later, including a wine importing component. With semiannual trips to France and Italy to uncover new growers and solidify ties with current growers; Neal has developed an impressive 90-grower portfolio from France, Italy, Spain, and recently Switzerland. Although it encompasses most of the famous regions, many of his growers are not particularly famous names. In some cases, like Paola Bea of Montefalco, their presence in Neal's portfolio has brought fame to them and their region.

Terroir Seminar

The recent SantaFe Wine & Chile Fiesta hosted a seminar on "terroir" in wines. Robert Haas (Tablas Creek), Randall Grahm (Bonny Doon Vineyards) and Neal teamed up, facing a roomful of eager "terroir" seminarists, in one of the most informative, freewheeling panels ever held at this event. The wines poured were almost superfluous as the air crackled with the panelist's ideas and concepts on terroir, eliciting spirited responses from the audience. Terroir is a French concept that has no direct translation into English. It roughly means the impact of the soil and the climate on a wine. As Robert Haas noted, sixty years ago, "gout de terroir" was a term bearing negative connotations...the taste of earth in a wine. Nowadays, terroir has morphed into a positive concept, as every winemaker asserts that the
sanctity of his terroir makes his wines unique in the world. Wine geeks love to debate the many nuances of terroir, making pronouncements with the profundity of Talmudic scholars. These endless discussions can become rather boring and tedious at times, not unlike "how many angels DO dance on the head of a pin??" In his book, Neal extends the concept of terroir to include both the grape variety and, "perhaps, human history." During the panel discussion, he amplified that idea to include "traditional winemaking styles." That's an interesting extension that
many "terroirists" would dispute, arguing that ANY influence of the winemaking serves only to obscure terroir in a wine. One wine he selected for the tasting illustrated his point very well. It was a Domaine Montbourgeau
Chardonnay from the Jura. Traditionally, white wines from the Jura are made in a rather oxidative style, from incomplete topping of the barrels. Many in the audience didn't understand this wine and found it "badly" oxidized, akin to a fino sherry. We found the wine loaded with interesting, nuanced character. One can visualize sitting down in a green mountain pasture, high in the Juras, with a bottle of this Chardonnay and a big chunk of Comte Gruyere (one of the Jura's glorious contributions to the cheese world), with the cow's warm breath nuzzling your neck.
That's the magic of terroir. Browse Neal's web site (www.MadRose.com) for his take on this nebulous
concept.

Reflections Of A Wine Merchant

Earlier this year, Neal published his first book, describing his evolution as a wine merchant. It's an absolutely fascinating read; one of the most well-written and entertaining wine reads we've had this year. Much of it beguiles as a traveler's tale as Neal serendipitously follows his nose and sketchy leads to track down unrepresented fine wines. His mountain trek searching for "Ping" (Signor Clerino), high in the nearly vertical vineyards of the majestic Italian Alps above Carema, is a story that had our feet itching to join him. As unlikely as it may sound, we found this book about the wine business a real "page turner". We were hooked on the cast of characters and eager to hear the "rest of the story"....the ups and downs of succession when his growers die and responsibility falls into unproved or passionless hands. The book is long on opinions, but short on polemics; a sharp contrast to many recent wine
books. He mentions famed wine critic Robert Parker only once...at least by name. Neal's opinions may not be universally held, but they are well thought out and passionately expressed. Neal's book opened our eyes to a number of unfamiliar wines. One can't read his vignettes about the classy, formidable Jeanne Ferret or the down-to-earth Luigi Ferrando without developing a thirst to seek out their wines from Pouilly-Fuisse and Carema. Neal's
description of Ferret's encounter with a "famous wine critic" is absolutely priceless!! Neal writes with an endearing turn of phrase that makes the book a very enjoyable read. He describes some modern-style Nebbiolos as "...this is like making a prima ballerina do the Charleston. It may be fun to watch, but the performance is not as layered and
challenging as Swan Lake." Well said and entirely apt.


So...the next time you're browsing the shelves of one of Santa Fe's better wine shops and spot a label with an unfamiliar name or provenance, look on the back side of the bottle. If it sports the easily recognizable Rosenthal Wine Merchants, consider the source...and try it. That trusting approach has led us to discover the glories of Jacques
Puffney's Poulsard and Bruno Verdi's Sangue di Giuda from the Oltrepo Pavese (an amazing match with the Fra'Mani salamis from Whole Foods). As Neal says, "the finest of wines pave the path to memory". His book and his wines will
do exactly that for you.
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The La Casa Sena Wine Shop has autographed copies of Neal Rosenthal's book for sale. Neal's web site (www.MadRose.com) also offers imported olive oils and honey, as well as Neal's own estate honey from his ranch in Upstate New York.

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