Some of the most impressive and important personalities in the wine business are women. We will only scratch the surface here, sadly, but these are the crème de la crème. We have a pioneering legend in Martine Saunier of Martine’s Wines, an Italian doyenne upholding and burnishing her family’s legacy in Cristiana Tiberio of Azienda Agricola Tiberio, and a brilliant revolutionary in Mary Taylor of Mary Taylor Wines.
Mary Taylor - When Mary first fell in love with wine in the early 1990s, it was the European classics that truly spoke to her and stole her heart. As a young professional selling French and Italian wine she quickly learned to appreciate wine in the “Old World” way— not as a luxury good reserved for special occasions, but a living agricultural product that belongs to everyday life. Simply put, the right wine is the perfect condiment. After many years working with the wines of Europe, Mary arrived at an important insight. Left in the dark by decades of simplistic marketing efforts that placed grape above geography, American consumers needed a brand they could trust to decipher the complex notion of terroir in a clear and straightforward way. Out of this realization, her elegant “White Label” was born. One may not recognize the geography on the white label, but the bottle contains an incredible wine at an incredible value.
Cristiana Tiberio - In 2008 Ricardo Tiberio handed the reins of the winemaking over to his gifted daughter Cristiana. Cristiana may be a farm girl from Abruzzo, but she is a brilliant winemaker who also teaches college level classes in the chemistry of winemaking. She also learned her craft in some of the most highly lauded wineries in Champagne (Jacques Selosse), Loire Valley (Nicolas Joly), and Mosel (Egon Muller) among others. But her heart took her home, “you can only truly make a wine with the greatest expression of the place if you have lived there and really understand the climate and sense of the place.” Which is why you are most likely to see her in the vineyards with her beautiful Abruzzese mountain dogs. We would be hard pressed to find a better bottle of Montepulciano d’Abruzzo for the money than what Cristiana crafts.
Martine Saunier – Martine has been in the business since birth, as it was her Parisian birthright. In so far as we are concerned, we shall start with 1979 when Martine incorporated her wine importing business. She disarmed the wine world with her acumen and charm, and is now regarded as having one of the most impressive wine portfolios in the business. There are precious few guarantees of quality in the wine industry, despite what we may wish to believe. Seeing the Martine’s logo on a bottle of imported wine is about as close as one can hope for an absolute guarantee of quality.
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