April 2, 2025 • 51 mins
Mary Taylor worked in different areas of the wine industry before establishing her import company, Mary Taylor Wines. She sources wines from classic European regions that deliver authenticity and a sense of place for wine-curious consumers who seek accessibly priced bottles. Mary Taylor’s White Label wines spotlight a wine’s geographical origin, typicity and vigneron on the bottle. Hers is a success story in a challenging and changing wine market.
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The Connected Table is broadcast live Wednesdays at 2PM ET and Music on W4CY Radio (www.w4cy.com) part of Talk 4 Radio (www.talk4radio.com) on the Talk 4 Media Network (www.talk4media.com).
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
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(00:20):
choosing W four CY Radio.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Welcome to the Connected Table Live. We're your hosts, Melanie
Young and David Ransom. You're insatiably curious culinary couple. We
bring you each week the amazing people we meet as
we travel in food, wine, spirits, and hospitality around the
country and the world. We love sharing their stories with you.
You're listening to us now on W four CY Radio,
(00:58):
but you can hear all our podcasts anytime anywhere after
the live show on iHeart, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, here your
favorite podcast platform, and we invite you to follow us
and connect on Instagram at the Connected Table and on
our Facebook page at the Connected Table. We love the
story of wine entrepreneurs, especially when they're women. For me personally,
(01:20):
it hits a special place in my heart. So I'm
really excited to talk to a woman in the wine
business who caught my eye actually through the New York Times,
but her wines have caught my heart as I've traveled
around the country and found them. Her name is Mary
Taylor and her company is Mary Taylor Wines. I think
it's a really bold move to put your name on
a label. I remember having my name on a company
(01:42):
and Young Communications, and that bears a lot of responsibility
because you are the person whose name is on the
door and on the bottle. But Mary does more than
that because also on the name of the wines that
she imports is the name of the vignoron She really
does a lot of work sourcing grower vitnor's around Europe.
Just France, but we've had some ones from Portugal and Italy,
(02:03):
and I think these wines are terrific. They're well priced,
they're well made, and they're a great discovery. So I'm
really excited to talk to Mary Taylor today. Welcome Mary.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
Thank you. That was a lovely introduction. I appreciate that.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Thanks so Mary, you're joining us from New Orleans, a
place that David and I love more than anywhere. It's
our happy place. So now we're soul sisters in other ways.
But tell us about your upbringing. Where did you grow
up and what kind of family were you in. Did
you have a family that enjoyed wine, for example.
Speaker 4 (02:34):
Yeah, that's a good question, that's a definitive No. I
grew up in the Massachusetts you know. I was in
Conquered mass which is a stunningly wealthy and beautiful place.
Now back when, you know, in the eighties, it wasn't
what it is now. Look, the biotech billionaire class kind
(02:56):
of found our town and have made it.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
Inaccessible sadly to people like me. But but I grew up.
Speaker 4 (03:03):
In this beautiful, beautiful rural town outside of Boston, and
my family settled there accidentally on a whim. But you know,
it's like old old school money and old families, and
we were sort of on the wrong.
Speaker 3 (03:19):
Side of the tracks.
Speaker 4 (03:20):
And about second third grade, I started to realize that,
like my friend's bedrooms were in turrets and their castle homes,
and that's not who we were. You know, I called
us the Jode family, you know, out of the grapes
of wrath.
Speaker 3 (03:38):
And I would so I would work in the town.
Ever since I was twelve, I had a little job downtown.
Speaker 4 (03:45):
I worked at the cheese shop. I worked at the
little catering place. I was a snowplow driver. I did
sort of jack of all trades growing up. And I
was kind of like the rough working girl of my
ritzy titsy town.
Speaker 3 (03:59):
And that's it. It's funny, I think.
Speaker 4 (04:01):
I like, we grew up on stuff like Chef Boyard
and pop tarts, you know, that was the height of cuisine.
But my next door neighbor was a French chef, and
very early on, I was interested in food in a
way that none of my siblings were. I remember demanding
spare ribs and where my siblings were demanding hot days.
(04:26):
I've always wanted a boiled lobster with butter. Things like
that that we know, they just didn't know where I
came from. And so I would apprentice next door with
the French chef, and she would give me cookbooks for
my birthday and I would cook through the cookbooks. So
very early on I was a culinary person. I watched,
(04:46):
you know.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
We didn't really have food network back then.
Speaker 4 (04:49):
But we had Julia Child, we had PBS, and I
looked through you know, I think I remember getting the
Savor Cook's Authentic French Book and I cooked every single
recipe fifteen times.
Speaker 3 (05:02):
So that's how I grew up. No wine was in
the house ever.
Speaker 4 (05:06):
Nobody knew about wine, and I didn't either until I
started campering.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
What time frame were we talking about, hies.
Speaker 3 (05:15):
No, it's eighties, Well, no nineties. Really.
Speaker 4 (05:18):
I graduated high school in ninety five, so between like
ninety two and two thousand, I lived in this in
the Massachusetts, the Boston area. When I was eighteen, I
was a wine server. I wouldn't call myself a Somalia
at the Boston Harbor Hotel downtown.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
Oh well, that's a great hotel. It's known for its
wonderful wine program. So that must have been a great
experience totally.
Speaker 4 (05:46):
It was extremely educational. You know, I learned how to
properly open a bottle of champagne. And at eighteen, and
I was very rough, you know, I didn't have like,
I wasn't a wut tanne in anyway, and so I
didn't have any of that training. That was just but
I would I learned so much about wine then, and
(06:07):
I remember I thought chalk Hill Tertinay back then was
the yummiest thing. And when chalk Hill Shurtney started following
my Instagram account, I said, oh, I've arrived. Not a
wine that I love today, honestly, but I'm right you
can do. Sorry, chock Kill.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
What was the name with the chef? Who is your neighbor?
Wondering if I know her. I'm older than you might imagine,
growing up in the subodies with a dad trying to
teach wine in Tennessee. Huh, that was interesting. Who was
the chef, by the way, who's your neighbor?
Speaker 4 (06:37):
Her name was Donna Poole, and she had married an
architect and they had the most beautiful house that in
our neighborhood, a house like that.
Speaker 3 (06:48):
They were the only one.
Speaker 4 (06:50):
And she was cooking just for her family and friends
and having parties.
Speaker 3 (06:55):
So I doubt you would know her.
Speaker 4 (06:56):
I think she did some architecture herself on the side
of But.
Speaker 3 (07:01):
Yeah, we went through Fanny Farmer and all the books.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
Those are all great books. I think my mom has
them all upstairs. And I am older than you, and
I knew a lot of the people who authored those books,
because I used to squire Julia Child around for the
James Beard Awards. I started the James Beard Foundation Awards,
and so you know Maryon Cunningham who wrote an updated
Fanny Farmer, she updated the Fanny Farmer cook book and
Julia Child. That was where they were older than me,
(07:26):
but they were the people I was working with at
the time. So it's a great way to kind of
get your feet when the business. But the Boston Harbor Hotel,
Daniel Bruce was the chef. I know, they do the
big wine festival of a year. That's great experience.
Speaker 4 (07:40):
Oh it was like early early on, and it helped
me later when I moved to New York. Yeah, so
I worked in a couple of restaurants. I worked for
Stuff and sherry Woods and Tapolis for a little bit.
Speaker 3 (07:54):
But something really crazy happened.
Speaker 4 (07:56):
I was invited to work in an office in York
City by Elle Weisel, the the Nobel laureate and Holocaust survivor, the.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
Author of Night. I just randomly applied for a job
and his office.
Speaker 4 (08:11):
My degree in college was literature and they liked my writing.
H always been really interested in writing.
Speaker 3 (08:19):
Where did you get to college.
Speaker 4 (08:20):
Mary, you went undergrad, Yeah, undergrad Boston College. And then
much later I get I get more degrees.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
It's a problem.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
Tell me, that's kind of a coup elle weasel. I mean,
my gosh, what an opportunity.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
I know, it was out of this world.
Speaker 4 (08:39):
So I moved to New York and I was rushed
into like taking phone call.
Speaker 3 (08:43):
I was handling the phones.
Speaker 4 (08:44):
And like President Sharrock's office would call and Kofi Anna,
you know, like big time and figuring out reservations at
CHIPRIONI with the with the Saffras.
Speaker 3 (08:57):
And the water families.
Speaker 4 (08:59):
And I mean it was suddenly and I was not
up to I mean, I had no idea. I didn't
know the Chipriani had six locations, I remember, and they said, well,
which one did you book at?
Speaker 3 (09:10):
And I said, I have no idea. They we didn't
have We didn't have like Google in the office. It
was all the phone book.
Speaker 4 (09:19):
It's amazing, but we The craziest thing was that nine
to eleven happened within a week of me coming there.
And uh, you know, I mean I was uptown on
sixty third and third where his office was. But U
but yeah, that was a definitive defining moment that I
was twenty four when that happened, and uh and yeah,
(09:40):
I lived through the aftermath, which kind of put me
in New York and made me a New Yorker for
the next twenty years.
Speaker 3 (09:48):
Yeah I was.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
I lived through it as well, and it changes your
life in many ways. When is of the world, when
is on the world as a client of mine, so
it was highly deeply impacted for me. We created the
wind Is of Hope Family Relief fun which raised millions
and millions and millions of dollars to help the food
service workers. But it changed my life as well. Mary.
I saw in your resume I linked in with you.
You also had some you dis financial work you worked on.
(10:11):
Did you work on Wall Street.
Speaker 3 (10:12):
For a whiles or yeah, well that's later, you know.
So I just I kind of sneaked through the business.
Speaker 4 (10:20):
I went to auction houses south of V's Akermaryll and
learned all about super fine wine. And then I opened
a retail store in Lower Manhattan.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
Oh what was it called.
Speaker 4 (10:31):
Pasanella and Sons on South Street, And I laid the
tile on the floor and bought all the wine and
learned a whole bunch of stuff and you know, I
then moved to Burgundy and I wrote a newsletter called
the Thorough Wine Society about about families and vineyarl and
then I would sell the wine that I wrote about.
Speaker 3 (10:52):
So I wasn't a journalist. I was just sending offers out.
Speaker 4 (10:55):
But Food and Wine Magazine mentioned it as best Summer
wine reads.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
And so wait, you were living in let me, so
you went from Okay, this is kind of interesting. So
you were working for the God and the WI L right,
it was amazing. September eleventh happened, and then breached that
little what happened and how suddenly you were running a
wine shop because that's a yeah.
Speaker 3 (11:17):
So he fizzled out.
Speaker 4 (11:20):
It was a very stressful time, and there was you know,
I know that like later on the Bernie the Bernie
made Off thing happened anyway, So I just he offered
that I could return to Boston and work in his
office back in Boston and New York project was kind
of a failure, and he was nine to eleven, all
these things, and I decided to try my hand at
(11:44):
living in New York.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
And I didn't know it anny there. Yeah, so I
went and got a job.
Speaker 4 (11:50):
I went and got an interview at Southby's in the
wine department.
Speaker 3 (11:54):
And lucky you. Yeah, yeah, I looked good in a
in a suit back then. And so I got the job.
Speaker 4 (12:04):
And I remember they asked me what my favorite wine was,
and I didn't know anything about expensive wine.
Speaker 3 (12:09):
So I said opus.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
One, right, you got the job.
Speaker 3 (12:15):
And I got the job, and I.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
To work with Jamie Ritchie.
Speaker 3 (12:18):
Was he there at the time, He was my boss.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
Yeah, okay, he's been a yeah, We've had him on
the Connected table. We've done I've done a couple of
articles on him. What a great, great experience working there.
Speaker 3 (12:29):
It was.
Speaker 4 (12:30):
It was it was kind of an entree into like
how New York Upper east Side society works, which now
I'm watching the Gilded Age and I'm like, oh, right, okay.
Speaker 3 (12:40):
It's still there. It's the same. So then I moved.
Speaker 4 (12:44):
I transitioned to Acker Merrill and those were the rooty years,
it seemed, you know.
Speaker 3 (12:52):
So it was really fast paced. It was fun.
Speaker 4 (12:55):
I was suddenly invited to like all the great tables
on Park Avenue for dinner because like I was young
and I think twenty six seven eight and young and
cute and naive, and I knew a lot more about
Lye than your average person of my.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
Stature, right, so I can't imagine the rooty waves rode
the broody wave.
Speaker 3 (13:18):
Yeah, well that was that part. But like I was
able to you know, I got to meet like and
hang out with.
Speaker 4 (13:23):
Jean Luis chav and right all the Wasserman's and you know,
Clive Coats, and I was kind of in this world
for this like quite a long time. And you know,
I guess I could say I'm sort of still in it,
but I don't really engage as much. I went to
Blake blind tasting dinners three times a week, and I
made this wonderful friendship with this couple in the village
(13:47):
who have constant dinners still it's almost like Christian So
it was like and their cellar is amazing. So I
remained really close with them, and they really taught me
how to taste great wine, just to really blind taste
and put ring. People would come with five thousand dollars
bottles and they put them in paper bags and we
(14:08):
blind taste. I mean, it wasn't about ego and money
as much as just like the subsession with the subject
of wine.
Speaker 3 (14:17):
So that was cool.
Speaker 4 (14:17):
So I go looked through that and then one night
at on Park Avenue, I over a blast of ninety
bond mar from rumy A. I like met this grower
who David Quaw, who was young and in New York,
and we hit it off and started dating, and I
(14:38):
eventually moved to Burgundy. So and that was when I
was running the store. The store was a great project.
It was the beginning of me realizing I didn't know
anything about business, which was this is like part of
being a woman in the business. Like I was just
thrown into New York with no resources, you know, so
I just kind of.
Speaker 3 (14:57):
Like went with what whatever things were sort of happening.
I wasn't like directing my life in any way.
Speaker 4 (15:03):
I was just going through and just becoming more and
more deeply involved in the wine business. But you know that,
like I had a job where I would, you know,
put in seven days a week and promise of equity
and all that. I didn't even know what the word
equity meant, that equality.
Speaker 3 (15:23):
So I didn't know these things. And I was kind
of taken for a little bit of a ride there.
Speaker 4 (15:29):
So I was happy to get out and start my
own newsletter project.
Speaker 3 (15:35):
And so that happened. I lived in Burgundy, I went
to like a.
Speaker 4 (15:38):
Lot of growers, family farms and wrote articles, and you know,
there was one moment where I was like, gosh, these
wines are so beautiful, but they look really cheap, like
the labeling is not elegant, and the quality is At
that point, I you know, having run a retail store
(15:58):
for three years with in New York City where there's
three hundred distributors trying to see you every day, I
was tasting a lot. I think my palette then was
like the height of it's I mean, I think my
palet's really good now.
Speaker 3 (16:14):
But then it was like I was I just knew
everything about wine at that point, and I was like.
Speaker 4 (16:19):
Ah, and I would see these great projects, like I'd
see these California wines that were okay but labeled so
nicely that it was like too easy to sell them.
And then you'd see these you know, French or Italian
ones that were really delicious and terrible terrible packaging, and
I kind of wanted to figure out what was behind that,
(16:41):
Like if the is the terrible packaging and indication of
like that they come from a cheap industrial co op
or what and so I would go to these family
farms and realize, no, these are like really excellent farms
and wine making as good as the best in Burgundy,
and yet they're like under presenting. They're not presenting well.
(17:04):
And that was the problem I started to set out
to solve.
Speaker 3 (17:08):
So I have a lot. I could go on and on.
So you just tell me what you well.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
I think I think it's interesting. And I do. You
did go to you did go and get a master's.
Was it a master's you got at n y U?
I mean you did study business at some point? Ye, right,
I did.
Speaker 3 (17:21):
I did.
Speaker 4 (17:21):
So, like I come back to New York and I
started playing around in wholesale and had like one really
epic business blow up.
Speaker 3 (17:29):
And I had them.
Speaker 4 (17:30):
Yeah, and I just and then another job like wouldn't
let me expand. And now I have my label on
the market and they didn't want me to expand it.
And I was like, I just don't know how to
start my own business with a lot of confidence and
how to do that.
Speaker 3 (17:45):
So I just went to n YU and got my
business degree.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
I think you're wise for doing that. I mean, you
know I I we have soul sisters in any way,
because I just started a company with I mean, if
I didn't have my dad by my side whispering in
my ear what to do, I don't know how I
would have succeed the way I did. To be honest, Mary,
you know as I was the creative. But you I
want to say something really important you mentioned that I
think is really important for anyone starting a business. I
(18:12):
believe that the best businesses solve a problem or create
a solution. They see the niche, they see what the
situation is, and they figure out a way to make
it better. And what you did is you traveled. You
have an exceptional palette that you learned on the job.
Good for you. That's pretty much how I did it
as well. My father used to blind taste with me.
He was a wine educator. You you learned through the business,
(18:36):
hands on. Totally awesome. And I think this is important
for anyone who's just I got to go get certified
and I'll have a job. It doesn't work that way.
You got to work in the business. You had some
blow ups that probably bruised your ego, hurt your wallet,
and pissed you off. Yep, right, you've been there, done that,
and that they put the fire in your belly. And
(18:56):
then you went to Europe. God bless you. I'd love
to go spend some time writing in Europe, in front
particular France, and you saw that there were these amazing
and I know these people because I've visited a lot
of wine regions as well. You've saw these amazing farmer
growers who had very good wines, but they maybe lacked
the sophistication which is very typical and then know how
(19:18):
to properly brand. Oh my god, a coyote is walking by,
so weird. Coyote is walking down in my studio. Sorry.
You you wanted to help them, so you started a
business correctly from where you wanted to help these amazing
grower producers get their their their their label out there,
(19:39):
and you created a label that is easy to read, honest, right,
It says what it is with no other pretense. Am
I correct?
Speaker 3 (19:51):
Yeah? Both the New York Times and the Wall Street
Journal use some term flummery or I don't know, Yeah, yeah,
I mean there was there's so many labels out there
that have things.
Speaker 4 (20:03):
That don't make any sense, like just no sense, like
I'm gonna throw my Navara producer under the bus because
we had some fun chuckling about this yesterday. Their their
beautiful Navara one is called Patricia, and it's like this
very creative way of writing the word Patricia, and it's
(20:23):
all super minimalist, modern, it doesn't mean anything.
Speaker 3 (20:27):
I'm like, god like, as poor salesperson in.
Speaker 4 (20:31):
Westchester, it's gonna have to tell some like you know,
would be customer, like all about what on earth is Patricia?
Like that doesn't tell you nothing about the wine, and
it's just annoying, like it's agree in all of this
like minimal I was like, somebody really should go to
Provine instead of a graphic design boots because I'm so
(20:53):
over these like hideous packages.
Speaker 3 (20:58):
So it just so happens. One of my best friends
is a It's the art director for Doubleday. She's very talented.
She used to be with Random House, Penguin all the
whole thing, and.
Speaker 4 (21:10):
We have always talked about design and fonts and and
we just I called her up and said I want
to do it like this, and in her first go
she's like, blu like this and it was heaven.
Speaker 3 (21:22):
I mean, it's perfection.
Speaker 4 (21:24):
So we've done a few projects like our Cheblis project
is her design, So she's my she actually owns a
little bit of.
Speaker 3 (21:30):
A piece of the company, and I'm just so thrilled.
Speaker 4 (21:35):
I think that's one of our secret weapons, is we have,
like somebody not in the wine business. I think too
many people go to wine label designers to design a
wine label.
Speaker 3 (21:43):
And I'm like, that's the problem. They they're this.
Speaker 4 (21:46):
No, they're not doing great work, honestly, especially in Europe.
So and I remember when I put my wine on
the market, people were shocked, like don't you want this?
Is so this doesn't even look nice, they would, you know,
this is like the frends were like, what is this?
Speaker 3 (22:03):
This is like so basic?
Speaker 2 (22:05):
You know what I love about the label. It's like
a great book. You can read it, you can you
can get the information easily. I don't have to search.
We get a lot of wine samples in here and
you just have to sometimes roll your eyes. And some
of them are kind of cool on artsy and that's
great too. But you know, at the end of the day,
when you're looking for an everyday wine to drink or bring,
(22:26):
you don't need a lot of gimmicks. You want good wine.
You want to find the wine you want to find
it easy. What I love. I've got your your Gayak
peril parent right in front of me. Yeah. So one
of the things I like about Mary Taylor Wine. So
your your company is Mary Taylor. You very discreetly put
your signature at the very bottom of the label, but
at the very top right off gayak Or, muscade Seba
(22:49):
and man or Ashene. So these are three. I have
a rose. So you know the sense of place immediately,
which to me is the most important thing when you're
drinking a wine is to understand the sense of place
because that's where the story begins in the bottle. And
then you put the name of the Venuron on the label,
which I think is just incredible. So this one is
(23:09):
Natalie Leroque and then Jacqueline de la May. I love
the fact a lot of these are women, not exclusively,
and then you know it's the Venuron and underneath and
then underneath that just Mary Taylor. And on the back
you explain what's in the bottle. You know, eighty percent mosaic,
which is I like Gyak wines, and twenty percent Muscadello.
(23:30):
It's that simple. You want to know what's in the bottle,
how much alcohol, does it have, who made it, where's
it from? Right?
Speaker 3 (23:36):
Totally, That's what I'm well.
Speaker 4 (23:38):
And I also, you know, when I was twenty four
in those days in sub of these, when I was
writing about wines, I could never afford you know, they
didn't pay any money. Sorry Jamie Ritchie, but twenty eight
thousand dollars it's not great.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
Try being a freelance writer right now. And I mean
somebody offered me eight cents a word or fifty dollars
for an eight hundred word article. I am ready to
get out of that end of the business now, oh boy.
Speaker 4 (24:01):
Yeah yeah, okay, yeah, yeah, well okay, so uh yeah.
But I was going to Garnet Liquors on sixty eighth
and Lex right by the subway, and I was looking
at the shelves and thinking, okay, with my eleven dollars,
like what can I buy?
Speaker 3 (24:20):
And I remember the.
Speaker 4 (24:21):
Constellation brands of the world, and like, you know, just
you could just tell, you know, I was trying all
kinds of Argentinean all these like lower end. I found
that I loved a lot of Portuguese wines that were unadulterated,
like a great you know, verite.
Speaker 3 (24:40):
And you know, I'm a drinker. I'm you know, I
hard drinking Irish Catholic from Boston.
Speaker 4 (24:44):
So like I, you know, I like to drink and
I like to enjoy it, and I don't like the gimmick.
Speaker 3 (24:49):
So I think.
Speaker 4 (24:50):
Also those big, giant, huge conglomerates that pump out these
brands that you know, God knows where they're from, and
you know the quality level. There's nothing independent about them.
There's no family behind them, and they're just pumped out
and put on every shelf because they have the trucks
and they have the long term relationships. And I don't
(25:12):
find the wines have any like real authenticity.
Speaker 3 (25:15):
I like to call it crunchy.
Speaker 4 (25:17):
But I was searching really hard at twenty four to
twenty five years old for something I could drink at
a good price, And I thought, what would I have
liked to buy back then? And I was that's exactly
who I made this project for, someone didn't know a
ton but was curious, and.
Speaker 3 (25:33):
I project my former self.
Speaker 4 (25:37):
So empathy for one's self, I think, and thinking about
what you would have liked is helpful in starting a
business too.
Speaker 2 (25:46):
You go for the wine curious, and there are a
lot of wine curious people, particularly you're we're connecting from
Tennessee and New Orleans, respectively. When you leave New York City,
in Chicago and the big cities, there are a lot
of wine curious people. A lot are women, by the way,
because women buy most of the wine now, of the
(26:07):
more than fifty percent of the consumer purchases are made
by women in the supermarkets. And they have a limited
selection of the wines to buy because they're all owned
by the big brand, so that's the only context they have.
And yet they want to learn more. And you speak
to the wine curious people who want to learn more,
but they don't want to spend a lot more exactly.
Speaker 4 (26:28):
And like there's also people that are mildly wine curious,
like maybe they're in med school or their single mother
in Toledo, or they're like a retiree who's like just.
Speaker 3 (26:39):
Want something good and affordable.
Speaker 4 (26:41):
All of those people are our market, you know, you know,
we really and then we love working with like different.
Speaker 3 (26:48):
Types of communities, communities of color and diverse people.
Speaker 4 (26:52):
You know, just we're just here to like bring a
really good product for a good price, and we think
that that's a that's a segment that is underserved. You know,
I worked in like, as I told it, ultra fine wine,
but I also I was a sales rep and working
in you know, Brooklyn when the cool hip natural wine
movement happened, and.
Speaker 3 (27:14):
I had a lot of qualms with it.
Speaker 4 (27:15):
I thought that a lot of the wines in the
natural wine movement.
Speaker 3 (27:19):
Were overly banged up and overly.
Speaker 4 (27:23):
Ascetic, and there was this sense that if they weren't
like super funky, they weren't part of.
Speaker 3 (27:30):
This new elite. And I thought that it was like, Okay,
how to make wine less successible and more elitist.
Speaker 5 (27:38):
Is to make it like not taste very good and
expensive and expensive and also like hipster as hell, and like, no,
I'm not that person either, you know, so neither.
Speaker 3 (27:49):
I remember feeling a little bit.
Speaker 4 (27:50):
Shunned by that community because you know, I like a good,
classically made wine. I love the appellation system, which is
highly rejected by the cool kids. And you know, you know,
there's this evil governing body telling these like artists how
they can. But I'm like, okay, look, even Bosquiat learned
(28:11):
to paint before going disco, Like there is some level
and nobody in America knows if Keyanti is a place
are great, So like.
Speaker 3 (28:20):
Stop making it more confusing and more elitists, Like.
Speaker 4 (28:23):
Let's reel it back and like God bless them, Like
do whatever you want to do for me. I think
that like making it a little bit simple, but giving
honest and having honest juice and giving families an opportunity
to share.
Speaker 3 (28:37):
It, like in this marketing project is like exactly the
mission I want to be on.
Speaker 2 (28:42):
You know, I love it. So I want to know
a couple of things. How do you source? How much
of your time is spent sourcing and on the road
pandemic aside sourcing and meeting families to select the wines?
What is that process for you? And how many families
are you working with now?
Speaker 3 (28:58):
Gosh, like twenty four or something like that.
Speaker 4 (29:01):
And it is a little it's hard, you know, each
of them we've we've been studying whether or not we
should like use their printer or like centralized. You know,
there's just a lot of questions. There's a lot of
nuances right now, Like.
Speaker 3 (29:16):
There's so many like vintage changes, and the next.
Speaker 4 (29:20):
Vintage is you know, like not as maybe as good
as the latter, maybe it's better or it is kind
of it's.
Speaker 2 (29:27):
Been so challenging in some of these regions. I mean
some of them have been really hit by hail and
floods and this and that. It it's been a crazy
couple of years.
Speaker 4 (29:35):
Yeah, and like down south in twenty twenty one, in
south of France it's like really hot.
Speaker 3 (29:41):
So is that you know?
Speaker 4 (29:43):
And then prices are moving all over the place. So
if there's a zillion trillion moving parts, well I'm.
Speaker 2 (29:50):
Going to tell you, I'm going to bring up one
right now. We work with a lot of importers in
our consulting end of our life. Uh. And a very
good friend of ours, Frank Casella Casella Perry with me
and said, you know the big problem he has, and
he's a big guy, shipments, his shipments. He just wrote,
like his wines from South America. Three times they've been delayed,
(30:11):
and every time that there's a delay, he's paying for
the delay as well as the shipment.
Speaker 3 (30:16):
Right. No, we're the same.
Speaker 4 (30:18):
We have twenty terrible we have more than twenty containers
currently tied up that we can't get that are like
skipping the port.
Speaker 3 (30:27):
So this actually is a good segue into my next degree.
Speaker 4 (30:31):
Tell me well, I'm at Georgetown studying trade like policy,
and it all stemmed from my work on the Trump
tariffs on wine, which I was really deeply involved in
in getting them taken off, which we did, thank gosh.
Speaker 3 (30:50):
Yeah, that would have put my business. That would have
ruined my business. So I would have.
Speaker 2 (30:54):
Put you out of business, right, and a lot of
small small importers out of business right.
Speaker 3 (31:00):
One hundred percent.
Speaker 4 (31:00):
And some of my clients got whacked with like a
million dollar in fees in tariff fees. So and they're
really harmful to the US economy. This is I think
people don't understand how this works. We don't have jurisdiction
over French people. They're not paying the US government. It's US, right,
So it's it's like a sneaky, evil tax.
Speaker 3 (31:22):
And it was a very corrupt tax. Honestly.
Speaker 4 (31:24):
That was a that was that was a that was
a backscratch, that was a campaign donation favor. And I'm
I know that because my cousin was Treasury secretary under
Reagan and like runs this big part of KKR and
knows everyone and knows everything, and he tipped me off
about a year before the terriffs came on so there
was like it was it was an evil and corrupt
(31:47):
act and it hurt a lot of tiny, little micro businesses.
Speaker 3 (31:51):
And so we oh my god. Well, the average size
of a wine business is for people.
Speaker 4 (31:56):
So because because of all the regulations, because every state
has the right to I mean, they supersede the commerce
clause and they can charge out of state vendors. The
tariff between the states and licensing feed like it's it's
so incredibly fragmented, which is why Amazon had to buy
wholes to sell you a bottle of wine instead of
(32:17):
sell you a bottle of wine.
Speaker 2 (32:19):
Well, the whole system, the three tiered system, is confusing
to people. Then state by say there's different regulations, and
then on top of that federal regulations. It's tough. So
what are you going to do? You're studying public policy
at Georgetown also one of my alma maters, I mean,
I attended Georgetown School of Foreign Service. My degree was
international relations at two Lane, but I wanted to be
an international foreign correspondent or ambassador. It happened. But I
(32:40):
do global work with people who work around the world
and wine and food. So what are you going to
do with this? What do you plan to do with
this this master's in public policy, and kudos to you
two masters.
Speaker 3 (32:50):
I know it's crazy.
Speaker 4 (32:53):
I know they gave me the scholarship, so I like
couldn't say no, wow, uh none of scholarship, but it's enough.
Speaker 3 (33:01):
To incentivize me to come. What am I going?
Speaker 4 (33:05):
Well, Like this weekend, while everyone's having fun at the
Escafier event, I have to write a paper about the
Federal Maritime Commission and like what are they doing with
their thirty million dollar budget and how are they deploying it?
And where are they achieving their KPIs and you know,
how do we have they been audited and like has
(33:25):
you know? So I'm learning all that stuff and what
am I going to do ultimately? I don't know, But
I'm forty four. I think the business is it's booming
and we're doing really good and giving a lot of
opportunities to people.
Speaker 3 (33:38):
And so maybe by the time I'm fifty two, who.
Speaker 4 (33:41):
Knows, maybe I have a role in the government at
some point. So I don't know, we'll see.
Speaker 2 (33:47):
I got a lot of policy is a great you
know if you can again, you you're doing this because
you saw a situation that needs this better solution. So
I love the fact again where we're soul sisters and
solution driven and you know, endeavors and businesses. I think
it's great. I noticed that you have a lot of partnerships.
I don't you know you have a lot of partner distributorships.
(34:07):
Are they all partners or they how do you get
your winds out there? Basically because I saw you have
alignments with a lot of different companies.
Speaker 4 (34:16):
Yeah, I think that at some point I saw the
anger at some retailers towards those importers or you know,
wineries that we're selling direct to consumer. So I think
for me, I had to make a choice either I
do direct to consumer or I go through the regular
(34:37):
three tier.
Speaker 3 (34:38):
Channel, and I don't. I think some people try to
hybrid that, but we don't.
Speaker 4 (34:42):
I just I think that I just want to respect
that I'm not competing against our customers at large. So
you know, we made a really intentional choice to stay
in the regular three tier. So we have one customer
in every state and that would be our distributor. So
that's how it works. We're an importer, we don't self distribute.
(35:04):
I am a partner in the Housatonic.
Speaker 3 (35:07):
Wine Company of Connecticut.
Speaker 4 (35:09):
Yeah, so Connecticut, Vermont, but all of the rest of
our states we sell to the distributor. We act like
a partnership because it's not just like, you know, we're
deeply in business together.
Speaker 3 (35:25):
And then we come to the market.
Speaker 4 (35:27):
I have this fabulous new sales manager director, Jess Story.
Speaker 3 (35:32):
Who comes from Laurent Perrier Champagne.
Speaker 4 (35:34):
She came over to us and super excited about her
and she's just coming off a trip from Chicago today,
and so we're on the road a lot.
Speaker 2 (35:44):
How big is your team now, Mary, Well, we.
Speaker 3 (35:47):
Have let's say it's three full time, and then we
have outstarts a lot. So like all of our warehouse
and logistics, we own our own warehouse, but those that
work there are people that we kind of outsourced. So
full time W two is just three.
Speaker 4 (36:03):
But I mean there's so many people involved, lawyers and
their compliants personally.
Speaker 3 (36:07):
Yeah, and just you know, bookkeeper and so.
Speaker 4 (36:11):
But like full time three, we're now hiring for two
new positions. So we're looking for kind of a support
staff to our director of Operations, Jen Goldenthal, who was incredible,
and then we're also eventually going to try to look
for a serious director of marketing. So I'm kind of
building that.
Speaker 2 (36:30):
So it's mainly women, women own and run company.
Speaker 3 (36:35):
Well, no, I mean we're not, you know, we can't.
Speaker 4 (36:38):
We're we're very happy with the Civil Rights Code where
you can't tell somebody that you want gender.
Speaker 3 (36:44):
But no, I mean it just happened that way.
Speaker 2 (36:47):
That Yeah, I think it's great, though, I mean I
think it's great. You know, it's a tough business. I
don't think a lot of listeners who are not in
the industry realize how difficult and challenging is with all
the legal and the you know, there's a lot of
layers to start an import business. I've always been fascinated
by it, and you know, some people only see the
glamour part. You're going around traveling and looking and taste
some wine. But it is not glamorous. It's tough. It's
(37:09):
a very tough business. So I have to ask you.
So I first learned about you from the Eric as
a Moth article in the New York Times in October
twenty twenty one. I know that you did not have
a PR agency. My background is marketing PR and in
a very big way, working with businesses like yours and
I know that was a huge, huge coup. How did
(37:31):
that one article change things for you?
Speaker 3 (37:35):
Oh my gosh.
Speaker 4 (37:36):
Well, firstly, it was a hail Mary email that we
sent saying, hey, just thought we would let you know
we're here in the world and we're doing something, and
you know, I've been in the I sat next to
Eric Asima in like twenty oh seven.
Speaker 3 (37:53):
You know, and I asked him if he had remembered,
and he said, I had no idea. He had no
idea who I was, but I had met him.
Speaker 4 (38:01):
So just decided. We were thinking about like what do
we do pr wise, we were should we get an agency?
Speaker 3 (38:06):
Should we do it?
Speaker 4 (38:08):
And then we just said, let's just let's just pitch
a hail mare, you know, let's just throw a big
you know.
Speaker 3 (38:14):
So we did and it within the hour. He wrote back.
And I was sitting at dinner. I was a tail
of goat in DC.
Speaker 4 (38:20):
I remember, with some friends after a school week at Georgetown,
and I just like suddenly turned blue and like jumped up.
I had to run outside the restaurant and do like
a million jumping decks and scream because I just couldn't
believe it. He wrote right back and said, oh, no,
I know you're here.
Speaker 3 (38:37):
In fact, I've.
Speaker 4 (38:38):
Been buying your wines around New York and I'm gonna
taste them and if I like them, assuming I.
Speaker 3 (38:44):
Will, I'd like to write an article. And I was like, ah,
like in that and so it was.
Speaker 4 (38:50):
Like the longest six weeks of my life between that
email and the article. But it happened, or is like
you just two months? Yeah, it just it just happened,
And it was funny. At first people were like wow, yeah, okay, awesome,
and like we didn't see like a huge bump and
we were like, oh, we thought this was gonna like
(39:12):
we're gonna take over the world with this, but then
it crept up.
Speaker 3 (39:16):
So like that came out in October and.
Speaker 4 (39:19):
Like our November was good, it wasn't like amazing, but
then December was off the charts, and like this past
february's off the charts, and you know we'd still be
off the charts if we are boats would come in.
Speaker 2 (39:32):
So I'm sorry about that.
Speaker 3 (39:35):
Next call is the Federal Maritime Commission. What are you
guys doing? Like you gotta control those courts?
Speaker 2 (39:41):
Come on, yeah, that's a big, big problem. You know.
I feel bad for all of our import friends, importer
and producers, because we all the demand is here, the
supply is not because we have a supply chain problem
that has to get fixed and there's a lot of feed.
Again here we go back into the federal system. But
you know, I, I you know, I know that feeling.
Speaker 3 (40:00):
You know.
Speaker 2 (40:00):
And Eric does not respond to everybody. He's very arms
length with people. We've had him on this show. You know,
I've worked in the business a long time. His responding
to my emails was rare because he tends to hold
pr people at arms length, really long arms length. So
you did the right thing with the hell Mary. You know,
I get pitched a lot, Mary, and when I get
(40:21):
that personal email or LinkedIn, that's sincere and honest, I
take a look. I really do, because I've been in
those shoes. I've done my own self. Pr Okay, I
know how hard it is and how that sincere letter
really does make a difference, It really does. I know.
Now you're gonna have to scale up. So what are
(40:42):
you gonna do?
Speaker 3 (40:43):
Yeah, great question. Can we have coffee?
Speaker 2 (40:47):
We will in New Orleans? No, So but what is
your what is your plan?
Speaker 3 (40:52):
Well, we're like rockin' with sales.
Speaker 4 (40:55):
So that's on and we just open Mexico Canada. We've
been in Sweden and we just got into the UK
and with in a major way. So those things are starting.
Uh yeah, I think the plan and that's it. We're
we're having a company summit in New Orleans in like
(41:16):
two weeks so we can really write out the plan
and really come to turn. We're looking at like enhancing
our software programs and yeah, you know, just stuff like.
Speaker 3 (41:25):
That, like little tweaks.
Speaker 4 (41:27):
I mean, the five year plan is you know, get
to like I don't know, I mean I think it would.
Speaker 3 (41:36):
I think we could become the next big super brand.
Speaker 4 (41:40):
And I hate to say that to like all of
our cool, tiny little boutique retailers who like don't want
us to be like the big big, but you know what,
Like the fact is all of our wines look the same,
but they're all different, and like, yeah, we can keep growing.
We can have one hundred wines from one hundred farms
and that's not that's I mean with the right amount
(42:02):
of stuff, like our system is in place.
Speaker 3 (42:04):
Like.
Speaker 4 (42:06):
That would maybe get the Constellation brand or the Gallows
Like who is this Mary? Like if that's when I
succeed when the gallows are like, who is this Mary Taylor?
Speaker 3 (42:17):
And why is she stealing our market share?
Speaker 2 (42:19):
You know that would you have it said? If you're
going to sell to the many of our friends have
there's mixed feelings about that. But you know, I've I
was believe or not Mary. I actually helped launch Josh
Sellers for Bill Deutsch. I did. I consult the brand
for a really really long time. Love Bill. It's like
a million, multi million case why now?
Speaker 4 (42:38):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (42:38):
You know, Yeah, and I learned a lot about the
why behind it because there was a big why behind it. Yeah,
it's you know, some of the brands have sold out,
some don't. Yeah. I guess you have to write your
own exit plan. You have to write your next chapter
and your exit plan, right.
Speaker 3 (42:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (42:56):
I kind of would like to be like Bob's Redmill,
where like the employees owned company at some point you yeah,
and that would be.
Speaker 3 (43:03):
I don't I don't need like to.
Speaker 4 (43:05):
I don't have great demands on you know, I'm doing fine,
So I'm I.
Speaker 2 (43:11):
Like employee owned. I mean, if I were to leave
what I'm doing now as a you know, pittance writer,
posting my own show and consolidating and went to a company.
My requirements when I looked at what I would do
if I were to do it would be employee owned equity.
I know the word equity and equality, and I like equity.
So if you can create a company where it's employee
(43:34):
owned and everybody has equity, you will have a loyal
base and team and it will it will grow from
within and grow without. And I truly believe that's the
way to go versus selling out.
Speaker 3 (43:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (43:50):
I mean, like one of obviously my biggest expense is payroll,
but like we don't we don't cheat. We're not super
cheap with payroll, Like we covered all like we have
four oh one came back.
Speaker 3 (44:00):
I mean we're pretty young to have.
Speaker 4 (44:01):
That level of like one hundred percent healthcare really good plan.
Speaker 2 (44:06):
Like there's a smart plan. It's a smart plan. I
did that with my company. I always said to my staff, Mary,
I may not pay the best, but you're gonna have
the best benefits, best working experience ever.
Speaker 3 (44:19):
Yeah. Well and also gate Yeah, and we're like pretty
much remote. We don't have a place where we all
get together.
Speaker 4 (44:27):
So so a high level of motivation is key and
that self starter.
Speaker 3 (44:34):
So I think that really motivating when you're making six
figures versus like mid five, you know what I mean, Like, oh, that's.
Speaker 4 (44:41):
And we definitely like, you know, my friend in Connecticut
works for a travel company called Talk and they're so
great and I know that they are key people who
have been there for like, you know, ten plus years,
are like they're making half a million a year, you know,
and I just think that's so great of the company
to give these big salaries to people that deserve them.
(45:04):
So you know, maybe that's going to be the future.
So yeah, I mean, we're just right now. It's pretty
like I have to reconcile the books right now.
Speaker 2 (45:13):
You got to get your back in ready, you got
to get to sale. And you know, for you right now,
it's making sure that that supply chain situation is addressed.
It's about getting the technology ready because the technology has
to be perfect in terms of because righting everybody, and
I'll give everybody the website. Now it's interesting. It's empty
dot wine. I guess you did the url thing dot wine,
(45:35):
so www dot mt dot wine and you can learn
more about Mary and the wines. Everyone I've had. David says,
I'm in love with you. I mean, it's kind of
funny you have this thing for me. I said, but
there's something about now that you know that you're New Orleans, Georgia.
We have so much in common. I can't wait to
get together. Person. I think the wines are terrific. I had,
you know, I was. I'd read about you, and then
(45:56):
I got to Chattanooga and New Orleans and I kept
seeing the wine at Whole Foods, up on them at
Whole Foods. And then there's a restaurant here at the
Flying Squirrel, uh, and they have a different selection, and
I kept saying, wow, this is you know, I have
a very refined palette, and I know when I can
taste teroa fairly easily versus every day, what the hell
is this? It could be anywhere wines, And that's what
(46:19):
spoke to me, besides the simplicity of the label. And
just wow, she gives the vineyar on some credit. You know,
those poor people, the farmers, you know, anyone that does that.
It's like awesome. So I think you're on a really
great trajectory that you can write if you you know,
you just got to make sure you're not overstretched. So
(46:39):
it just gets.
Speaker 3 (46:40):
Yeah, right, Well, that's the thing. Like, and I apologize
I was yelled at.
Speaker 2 (46:44):
You, like I really, I know, I you know, I
said that to listen. I said that once because I
was that person. I have been that. But great Adam
Tohani and I'll share this with you, the great Adam Toahani,
one of the great restaurant designers in the world. I
came down for a meeting, said I'm just really crazed,
and he just said, Melanie, listen to me. You I
(47:05):
have given you my time. I am busy too. You
are never too busy to meet with somebody who is
giving you their time. And I got to tell you,
I was humbled.
Speaker 3 (47:16):
By that, totally, totally.
Speaker 2 (47:19):
So yeah, yeah, just a word, It's like it was
a humbling experience. I learned a big lesson.
Speaker 3 (47:25):
Yeah. Well, I mean that's the thing.
Speaker 4 (47:27):
Like people, so I travel all the time, just constantly,
and like it's too much. You know, last year I
was on the road forty five weeks of the year
and like I've put on wait and I don't love
you know, I'm just kind of I'm excited I'm going
to but like so the company, everybody in the company
(47:48):
understands that like one of the goals for the company
is that I don't over extend myself.
Speaker 3 (47:53):
And so there's so many people that are like, oh
my god, can you come back and we'll do a
dinner in like somewhere.
Speaker 4 (48:00):
Like last Friday, I did a dinner in Solomon, Maryland,
and it was really hard to get to and I
had to spend an extra night on the road and
like extend my flight and missed my Saturday beloved Pilates
class and like nazee my pets, and I was like, sure,
I'd love to and then it was like it was
an okay event, you know, and it was just a
lot for that and so I was just like, I
(48:22):
don't know, at what point can I I'm.
Speaker 2 (48:24):
Gonna give you some advice before we wrap up the show,
because I've been that person and a lot of what
I do is to help people who are entrepreneurs who
you're gonna learn to say no. It's hard to say no,
but I've learned to do a cost benefit analysis. And
you're a business person, what is the cost to me
time wise and costs wise to go to this event
and what will the benefit be in terms of bottom
(48:46):
line sales? Because awareness. As you have learned from the
eric asthma. Awareness and sales are different things. So creating
awareness and this will be great networking, a great awareness,
that's just great. But does that pay the bills? And
it's a tough decision because you want to be out
there promoting the brand. But then get some great brand ambassadors,
you know, start working on your brand ambassador program and
(49:07):
and and let go a bit because you got to
you know, you got to be the CEO.
Speaker 4 (49:13):
Totally, totally and thank you. And I just you know,
I might mention like I I've seen a few really
talented why people, you know, burn out and die at
age sixty, you know, And I don't want to be
that person at all.
Speaker 3 (49:29):
I really don't want to be that person.
Speaker 2 (49:31):
I won't be that person if you put the if
you put the right checks and balances in place. And
I was that person. I did have a health scare
as a result of overdoing it. So I learned the
hard way. So I'm giving you my best advice. Create
that plan now, like your business plan, create your self
care management plan while you're growing your business, so you
(49:51):
have that strategy as well, so you don't have that
experience because you know where it could go, and you
know what you can do to stop it. I really
enjoyed speaking with you. You've been You've given me your time,
so thank you, because I know it's busy. We've come
to the end. I just want to let everybody know
again that we've been talking with Mary Taylor. Her she
(50:11):
is an importer of wines from grower vineurons. Uh, mainly
in Europe, right, do you have any South America?
Speaker 3 (50:19):
No, all Europe, but we've just sat in Germany, so
we are.
Speaker 2 (50:23):
That's great. I think German terrific. So you can. You
can buy them at retail and off and on premise,
so check the website www dot mt dot wine. And
I can't wait to meet you in New Orleans and
have a glass of wine with you and and talk further.
So thank you very much for your time.
Speaker 3 (50:43):
Again, thank you, Melanie. And yeah, we definitely have to
get together. And I thank you for Kata. All right,
take care great you too,
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(00:20):
choosing W four CY Radio.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Welcome to the Connected Table Live. We're your hosts, Melanie
Young and David Ransom. You're insatiably curious culinary couple. We
bring you each week the amazing people we meet as
we travel in food, wine, spirits, and hospitality around the
country and the world. We love sharing their stories with you.
You're listening to us now on W four CY Radio,
(00:58):
but you can hear all our podcasts anytime anywhere after
the live show on iHeart, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, here your
favorite podcast platform, and we invite you to follow us
and connect on Instagram at the Connected Table and on
our Facebook page at the Connected Table. We love the
story of wine entrepreneurs, especially when they're women. For me personally,
(01:20):
it hits a special place in my heart. So I'm
really excited to talk to a woman in the wine
business who caught my eye actually through the New York Times,
but her wines have caught my heart as I've traveled
around the country and found them. Her name is Mary
Taylor and her company is Mary Taylor Wines. I think
it's a really bold move to put your name on
a label. I remember having my name on a company
(01:42):
and Young Communications, and that bears a lot of responsibility
because you are the person whose name is on the
door and on the bottle. But Mary does more than
that because also on the name of the wines that
she imports is the name of the vignoron She really
does a lot of work sourcing grower vitnor's around Europe.
Just France, but we've had some ones from Portugal and Italy,
(02:03):
and I think these wines are terrific. They're well priced,
they're well made, and they're a great discovery. So I'm
really excited to talk to Mary Taylor today. Welcome Mary.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
Thank you. That was a lovely introduction. I appreciate that.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Thanks so Mary, you're joining us from New Orleans, a
place that David and I love more than anywhere. It's
our happy place. So now we're soul sisters in other ways.
But tell us about your upbringing. Where did you grow
up and what kind of family were you in. Did
you have a family that enjoyed wine, for example.
Speaker 4 (02:34):
Yeah, that's a good question, that's a definitive No. I
grew up in the Massachusetts you know. I was in
Conquered mass which is a stunningly wealthy and beautiful place.
Now back when, you know, in the eighties, it wasn't
what it is now. Look, the biotech billionaire class kind
(02:56):
of found our town and have made it.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
Inaccessible sadly to people like me. But but I grew up.
Speaker 4 (03:03):
In this beautiful, beautiful rural town outside of Boston, and
my family settled there accidentally on a whim. But you know,
it's like old old school money and old families, and
we were sort of on the wrong.
Speaker 3 (03:19):
Side of the tracks.
Speaker 4 (03:20):
And about second third grade, I started to realize that,
like my friend's bedrooms were in turrets and their castle homes,
and that's not who we were. You know, I called
us the Jode family, you know, out of the grapes
of wrath.
Speaker 3 (03:38):
And I would so I would work in the town.
Ever since I was twelve, I had a little job downtown.
Speaker 4 (03:45):
I worked at the cheese shop. I worked at the
little catering place. I was a snowplow driver. I did
sort of jack of all trades growing up. And I
was kind of like the rough working girl of my
ritzy titsy town.
Speaker 3 (03:59):
And that's it. It's funny, I think.
Speaker 4 (04:01):
I like, we grew up on stuff like Chef Boyard
and pop tarts, you know, that was the height of cuisine.
But my next door neighbor was a French chef, and
very early on, I was interested in food in a
way that none of my siblings were. I remember demanding
spare ribs and where my siblings were demanding hot days.
(04:26):
I've always wanted a boiled lobster with butter. Things like
that that we know, they just didn't know where I
came from. And so I would apprentice next door with
the French chef, and she would give me cookbooks for
my birthday and I would cook through the cookbooks. So
very early on I was a culinary person. I watched,
(04:46):
you know.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
We didn't really have food network back then.
Speaker 4 (04:49):
But we had Julia Child, we had PBS, and I
looked through you know, I think I remember getting the
Savor Cook's Authentic French Book and I cooked every single
recipe fifteen times.
Speaker 3 (05:02):
So that's how I grew up. No wine was in
the house ever.
Speaker 4 (05:06):
Nobody knew about wine, and I didn't either until I
started campering.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
What time frame were we talking about, hies.
Speaker 3 (05:15):
No, it's eighties, Well, no nineties. Really.
Speaker 4 (05:18):
I graduated high school in ninety five, so between like
ninety two and two thousand, I lived in this in
the Massachusetts, the Boston area. When I was eighteen, I
was a wine server. I wouldn't call myself a Somalia
at the Boston Harbor Hotel downtown.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
Oh well, that's a great hotel. It's known for its
wonderful wine program. So that must have been a great
experience totally.
Speaker 4 (05:46):
It was extremely educational. You know, I learned how to
properly open a bottle of champagne. And at eighteen, and
I was very rough, you know, I didn't have like,
I wasn't a wut tanne in anyway, and so I
didn't have any of that training. That was just but
I would I learned so much about wine then, and
(06:07):
I remember I thought chalk Hill Tertinay back then was
the yummiest thing. And when chalk Hill Shurtney started following
my Instagram account, I said, oh, I've arrived. Not a
wine that I love today, honestly, but I'm right you
can do. Sorry, chock Kill.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
What was the name with the chef? Who is your neighbor?
Wondering if I know her. I'm older than you might imagine,
growing up in the subodies with a dad trying to
teach wine in Tennessee. Huh, that was interesting. Who was
the chef, by the way, who's your neighbor?
Speaker 4 (06:37):
Her name was Donna Poole, and she had married an
architect and they had the most beautiful house that in
our neighborhood, a house like that.
Speaker 3 (06:48):
They were the only one.
Speaker 4 (06:50):
And she was cooking just for her family and friends
and having parties.
Speaker 3 (06:55):
So I doubt you would know her.
Speaker 4 (06:56):
I think she did some architecture herself on the side
of But.
Speaker 3 (07:01):
Yeah, we went through Fanny Farmer and all the books.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
Those are all great books. I think my mom has
them all upstairs. And I am older than you, and
I knew a lot of the people who authored those books,
because I used to squire Julia Child around for the
James Beard Awards. I started the James Beard Foundation Awards,
and so you know Maryon Cunningham who wrote an updated
Fanny Farmer, she updated the Fanny Farmer cook book and
Julia Child. That was where they were older than me,
(07:26):
but they were the people I was working with at
the time. So it's a great way to kind of
get your feet when the business. But the Boston Harbor Hotel,
Daniel Bruce was the chef. I know, they do the
big wine festival of a year. That's great experience.
Speaker 4 (07:40):
Oh it was like early early on, and it helped
me later when I moved to New York. Yeah, so
I worked in a couple of restaurants. I worked for
Stuff and sherry Woods and Tapolis for a little bit.
Speaker 3 (07:54):
But something really crazy happened.
Speaker 4 (07:56):
I was invited to work in an office in York
City by Elle Weisel, the the Nobel laureate and Holocaust survivor, the.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
Author of Night. I just randomly applied for a job
and his office.
Speaker 4 (08:11):
My degree in college was literature and they liked my writing.
H always been really interested in writing.
Speaker 3 (08:19):
Where did you get to college.
Speaker 4 (08:20):
Mary, you went undergrad, Yeah, undergrad Boston College. And then
much later I get I get more degrees.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
It's a problem.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
Tell me, that's kind of a coup elle weasel. I mean,
my gosh, what an opportunity.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
I know, it was out of this world.
Speaker 4 (08:39):
So I moved to New York and I was rushed
into like taking phone call.
Speaker 3 (08:43):
I was handling the phones.
Speaker 4 (08:44):
And like President Sharrock's office would call and Kofi Anna,
you know, like big time and figuring out reservations at
CHIPRIONI with the with the Saffras.
Speaker 3 (08:57):
And the water families.
Speaker 4 (08:59):
And I mean it was suddenly and I was not
up to I mean, I had no idea. I didn't
know the Chipriani had six locations, I remember, and they said, well,
which one did you book at?
Speaker 3 (09:10):
And I said, I have no idea. They we didn't
have We didn't have like Google in the office. It
was all the phone book.
Speaker 4 (09:19):
It's amazing, but we The craziest thing was that nine
to eleven happened within a week of me coming there.
And uh, you know, I mean I was uptown on
sixty third and third where his office was. But U
but yeah, that was a definitive defining moment that I
was twenty four when that happened, and uh and yeah,
(09:40):
I lived through the aftermath, which kind of put me
in New York and made me a New Yorker for
the next twenty years.
Speaker 3 (09:48):
Yeah I was.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
I lived through it as well, and it changes your
life in many ways. When is of the world, when
is on the world as a client of mine, so
it was highly deeply impacted for me. We created the
wind Is of Hope Family Relief fun which raised millions
and millions and millions of dollars to help the food
service workers. But it changed my life as well. Mary.
I saw in your resume I linked in with you.
You also had some you dis financial work you worked on.
(10:11):
Did you work on Wall Street.
Speaker 3 (10:12):
For a whiles or yeah, well that's later, you know.
So I just I kind of sneaked through the business.
Speaker 4 (10:20):
I went to auction houses south of V's Akermaryll and
learned all about super fine wine. And then I opened
a retail store in Lower Manhattan.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
Oh what was it called.
Speaker 4 (10:31):
Pasanella and Sons on South Street, And I laid the
tile on the floor and bought all the wine and
learned a whole bunch of stuff and you know, I
then moved to Burgundy and I wrote a newsletter called
the Thorough Wine Society about about families and vineyarl and
then I would sell the wine that I wrote about.
Speaker 3 (10:52):
So I wasn't a journalist. I was just sending offers out.
Speaker 4 (10:55):
But Food and Wine Magazine mentioned it as best Summer
wine reads.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
And so wait, you were living in let me, so
you went from Okay, this is kind of interesting. So
you were working for the God and the WI L right,
it was amazing. September eleventh happened, and then breached that
little what happened and how suddenly you were running a
wine shop because that's a yeah.
Speaker 3 (11:17):
So he fizzled out.
Speaker 4 (11:20):
It was a very stressful time, and there was you know,
I know that like later on the Bernie the Bernie
made Off thing happened anyway, So I just he offered
that I could return to Boston and work in his
office back in Boston and New York project was kind
of a failure, and he was nine to eleven, all
these things, and I decided to try my hand at
(11:44):
living in New York.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
And I didn't know it anny there. Yeah, so I
went and got a job.
Speaker 4 (11:50):
I went and got an interview at Southby's in the
wine department.
Speaker 3 (11:54):
And lucky you. Yeah, yeah, I looked good in a
in a suit back then. And so I got the job.
Speaker 4 (12:04):
And I remember they asked me what my favorite wine was,
and I didn't know anything about expensive wine.
Speaker 3 (12:09):
So I said opus.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
One, right, you got the job.
Speaker 3 (12:15):
And I got the job, and I.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
To work with Jamie Ritchie.
Speaker 3 (12:18):
Was he there at the time, He was my boss.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
Yeah, okay, he's been a yeah, We've had him on
the Connected table. We've done I've done a couple of
articles on him. What a great, great experience working there.
Speaker 3 (12:29):
It was.
Speaker 4 (12:30):
It was it was kind of an entree into like
how New York Upper east Side society works, which now
I'm watching the Gilded Age and I'm like, oh, right, okay.
Speaker 3 (12:40):
It's still there. It's the same. So then I moved.
Speaker 4 (12:44):
I transitioned to Acker Merrill and those were the rooty years,
it seemed, you know.
Speaker 3 (12:52):
So it was really fast paced. It was fun.
Speaker 4 (12:55):
I was suddenly invited to like all the great tables
on Park Avenue for dinner because like I was young
and I think twenty six seven eight and young and
cute and naive, and I knew a lot more about
Lye than your average person of my.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
Stature, right, so I can't imagine the rooty waves rode
the broody wave.
Speaker 3 (13:18):
Yeah, well that was that part. But like I was
able to you know, I got to meet like and
hang out with.
Speaker 4 (13:23):
Jean Luis chav and right all the Wasserman's and you know,
Clive Coats, and I was kind of in this world
for this like quite a long time. And you know,
I guess I could say I'm sort of still in it,
but I don't really engage as much. I went to
Blake blind tasting dinners three times a week, and I
made this wonderful friendship with this couple in the village
(13:47):
who have constant dinners still it's almost like Christian So
it was like and their cellar is amazing. So I
remained really close with them, and they really taught me
how to taste great wine, just to really blind taste
and put ring. People would come with five thousand dollars
bottles and they put them in paper bags and we
(14:08):
blind taste. I mean, it wasn't about ego and money
as much as just like the subsession with the subject
of wine.
Speaker 3 (14:17):
So that was cool.
Speaker 4 (14:17):
So I go looked through that and then one night
at on Park Avenue, I over a blast of ninety
bond mar from rumy A. I like met this grower
who David Quaw, who was young and in New York,
and we hit it off and started dating, and I
(14:38):
eventually moved to Burgundy. So and that was when I
was running the store. The store was a great project.
It was the beginning of me realizing I didn't know
anything about business, which was this is like part of
being a woman in the business. Like I was just
thrown into New York with no resources, you know, so
I just kind of.
Speaker 3 (14:57):
Like went with what whatever things were sort of happening.
I wasn't like directing my life in any way.
Speaker 4 (15:03):
I was just going through and just becoming more and
more deeply involved in the wine business. But you know that,
like I had a job where I would, you know,
put in seven days a week and promise of equity
and all that. I didn't even know what the word
equity meant, that equality.
Speaker 3 (15:23):
So I didn't know these things. And I was kind
of taken for a little bit of a ride there.
Speaker 4 (15:29):
So I was happy to get out and start my
own newsletter project.
Speaker 3 (15:35):
And so that happened. I lived in Burgundy, I went
to like a.
Speaker 4 (15:38):
Lot of growers, family farms and wrote articles, and you know,
there was one moment where I was like, gosh, these
wines are so beautiful, but they look really cheap, like
the labeling is not elegant, and the quality is At
that point, I you know, having run a retail store
(15:58):
for three years with in New York City where there's
three hundred distributors trying to see you every day, I
was tasting a lot. I think my palette then was
like the height of it's I mean, I think my
palet's really good now.
Speaker 3 (16:14):
But then it was like I was I just knew
everything about wine at that point, and I was like.
Speaker 4 (16:19):
Ah, and I would see these great projects, like I'd
see these California wines that were okay but labeled so
nicely that it was like too easy to sell them.
And then you'd see these you know, French or Italian
ones that were really delicious and terrible terrible packaging, and
I kind of wanted to figure out what was behind that,
(16:41):
Like if the is the terrible packaging and indication of
like that they come from a cheap industrial co op
or what and so I would go to these family
farms and realize, no, these are like really excellent farms
and wine making as good as the best in Burgundy,
and yet they're like under presenting. They're not presenting well.
(17:04):
And that was the problem I started to set out
to solve.
Speaker 3 (17:08):
So I have a lot. I could go on and on.
So you just tell me what you well.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
I think I think it's interesting. And I do. You
did go to you did go and get a master's.
Was it a master's you got at n y U?
I mean you did study business at some point? Ye, right,
I did.
Speaker 3 (17:21):
I did.
Speaker 4 (17:21):
So, like I come back to New York and I
started playing around in wholesale and had like one really
epic business blow up.
Speaker 3 (17:29):
And I had them.
Speaker 4 (17:30):
Yeah, and I just and then another job like wouldn't
let me expand. And now I have my label on
the market and they didn't want me to expand it.
And I was like, I just don't know how to
start my own business with a lot of confidence and
how to do that.
Speaker 3 (17:45):
So I just went to n YU and got my
business degree.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
I think you're wise for doing that. I mean, you
know I I we have soul sisters in any way,
because I just started a company with I mean, if
I didn't have my dad by my side whispering in
my ear what to do, I don't know how I
would have succeed the way I did. To be honest, Mary,
you know as I was the creative. But you I
want to say something really important you mentioned that I
think is really important for anyone starting a business. I
(18:12):
believe that the best businesses solve a problem or create
a solution. They see the niche, they see what the
situation is, and they figure out a way to make
it better. And what you did is you traveled. You
have an exceptional palette that you learned on the job.
Good for you. That's pretty much how I did it
as well. My father used to blind taste with me.
He was a wine educator. You you learned through the business,
(18:36):
hands on. Totally awesome. And I think this is important
for anyone who's just I got to go get certified
and I'll have a job. It doesn't work that way.
You got to work in the business. You had some
blow ups that probably bruised your ego, hurt your wallet,
and pissed you off. Yep, right, you've been there, done that,
and that they put the fire in your belly. And
(18:56):
then you went to Europe. God bless you. I'd love
to go spend some time writing in Europe, in front
particular France, and you saw that there were these amazing
and I know these people because I've visited a lot
of wine regions as well. You've saw these amazing farmer
growers who had very good wines, but they maybe lacked
the sophistication which is very typical and then know how
(19:18):
to properly brand. Oh my god, a coyote is walking by,
so weird. Coyote is walking down in my studio. Sorry.
You you wanted to help them, so you started a
business correctly from where you wanted to help these amazing
grower producers get their their their their label out there,
(19:39):
and you created a label that is easy to read, honest, right,
It says what it is with no other pretense. Am
I correct?
Speaker 3 (19:51):
Yeah? Both the New York Times and the Wall Street
Journal use some term flummery or I don't know, Yeah, yeah,
I mean there was there's so many labels out there
that have things.
Speaker 4 (20:03):
That don't make any sense, like just no sense, like
I'm gonna throw my Navara producer under the bus because
we had some fun chuckling about this yesterday. Their their
beautiful Navara one is called Patricia, and it's like this
very creative way of writing the word Patricia, and it's
(20:23):
all super minimalist, modern, it doesn't mean anything.
Speaker 3 (20:27):
I'm like, god like, as poor salesperson in.
Speaker 4 (20:31):
Westchester, it's gonna have to tell some like you know,
would be customer, like all about what on earth is Patricia?
Like that doesn't tell you nothing about the wine, and
it's just annoying, like it's agree in all of this
like minimal I was like, somebody really should go to
Provine instead of a graphic design boots because I'm so
(20:53):
over these like hideous packages.
Speaker 3 (20:58):
So it just so happens. One of my best friends
is a It's the art director for Doubleday. She's very talented.
She used to be with Random House, Penguin all the
whole thing, and.
Speaker 4 (21:10):
We have always talked about design and fonts and and
we just I called her up and said I want
to do it like this, and in her first go
she's like, blu like this and it was heaven.
Speaker 3 (21:22):
I mean, it's perfection.
Speaker 4 (21:24):
So we've done a few projects like our Cheblis project
is her design, So she's my she actually owns a
little bit of.
Speaker 3 (21:30):
A piece of the company, and I'm just so thrilled.
Speaker 4 (21:35):
I think that's one of our secret weapons, is we have,
like somebody not in the wine business. I think too
many people go to wine label designers to design a
wine label.
Speaker 3 (21:43):
And I'm like, that's the problem. They they're this.
Speaker 4 (21:46):
No, they're not doing great work, honestly, especially in Europe.
So and I remember when I put my wine on
the market, people were shocked, like don't you want this?
Is so this doesn't even look nice, they would, you know,
this is like the frends were like, what is this?
Speaker 3 (22:03):
This is like so basic?
Speaker 2 (22:05):
You know what I love about the label. It's like
a great book. You can read it, you can you
can get the information easily. I don't have to search.
We get a lot of wine samples in here and
you just have to sometimes roll your eyes. And some
of them are kind of cool on artsy and that's
great too. But you know, at the end of the day,
when you're looking for an everyday wine to drink or bring,
(22:26):
you don't need a lot of gimmicks. You want good wine.
You want to find the wine you want to find
it easy. What I love. I've got your your Gayak
peril parent right in front of me. Yeah. So one
of the things I like about Mary Taylor Wine. So
your your company is Mary Taylor. You very discreetly put
your signature at the very bottom of the label, but
at the very top right off gayak Or, muscade Seba
(22:49):
and man or Ashene. So these are three. I have
a rose. So you know the sense of place immediately,
which to me is the most important thing when you're
drinking a wine is to understand the sense of place
because that's where the story begins in the bottle. And
then you put the name of the Venuron on the label,
which I think is just incredible. So this one is
(23:09):
Natalie Leroque and then Jacqueline de la May. I love
the fact a lot of these are women, not exclusively,
and then you know it's the Venuron and underneath and
then underneath that just Mary Taylor. And on the back
you explain what's in the bottle. You know, eighty percent mosaic,
which is I like Gyak wines, and twenty percent Muscadello.
(23:30):
It's that simple. You want to know what's in the bottle,
how much alcohol, does it have, who made it, where's
it from? Right?
Speaker 3 (23:36):
Totally, That's what I'm well.
Speaker 4 (23:38):
And I also, you know, when I was twenty four
in those days in sub of these, when I was
writing about wines, I could never afford you know, they
didn't pay any money. Sorry Jamie Ritchie, but twenty eight
thousand dollars it's not great.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
Try being a freelance writer right now. And I mean
somebody offered me eight cents a word or fifty dollars
for an eight hundred word article. I am ready to
get out of that end of the business now, oh boy.
Speaker 4 (24:01):
Yeah yeah, okay, yeah, yeah, well okay, so uh yeah.
But I was going to Garnet Liquors on sixty eighth
and Lex right by the subway, and I was looking
at the shelves and thinking, okay, with my eleven dollars,
like what can I buy?
Speaker 3 (24:20):
And I remember the.
Speaker 4 (24:21):
Constellation brands of the world, and like, you know, just
you could just tell, you know, I was trying all
kinds of Argentinean all these like lower end. I found
that I loved a lot of Portuguese wines that were unadulterated,
like a great you know, verite.
Speaker 3 (24:40):
And you know, I'm a drinker. I'm you know, I
hard drinking Irish Catholic from Boston.
Speaker 4 (24:44):
So like I, you know, I like to drink and
I like to enjoy it, and I don't like the gimmick.
Speaker 3 (24:49):
So I think.
Speaker 4 (24:50):
Also those big, giant, huge conglomerates that pump out these
brands that you know, God knows where they're from, and
you know the quality level. There's nothing independent about them.
There's no family behind them, and they're just pumped out
and put on every shelf because they have the trucks
and they have the long term relationships. And I don't
(25:12):
find the wines have any like real authenticity.
Speaker 3 (25:15):
I like to call it crunchy.
Speaker 4 (25:17):
But I was searching really hard at twenty four to
twenty five years old for something I could drink at
a good price, And I thought, what would I have
liked to buy back then? And I was that's exactly
who I made this project for, someone didn't know a
ton but was curious, and.
Speaker 3 (25:33):
I project my former self.
Speaker 4 (25:37):
So empathy for one's self, I think, and thinking about
what you would have liked is helpful in starting a
business too.
Speaker 2 (25:46):
You go for the wine curious, and there are a
lot of wine curious people, particularly you're we're connecting from
Tennessee and New Orleans, respectively. When you leave New York City,
in Chicago and the big cities, there are a lot
of wine curious people. A lot are women, by the way,
because women buy most of the wine now, of the
(26:07):
more than fifty percent of the consumer purchases are made
by women in the supermarkets. And they have a limited
selection of the wines to buy because they're all owned
by the big brand, so that's the only context they have.
And yet they want to learn more. And you speak
to the wine curious people who want to learn more,
but they don't want to spend a lot more exactly.
Speaker 4 (26:28):
And like there's also people that are mildly wine curious,
like maybe they're in med school or their single mother
in Toledo, or they're like a retiree who's like just.
Speaker 3 (26:39):
Want something good and affordable.
Speaker 4 (26:41):
All of those people are our market, you know, you know,
we really and then we love working with like different.
Speaker 3 (26:48):
Types of communities, communities of color and diverse people.
Speaker 4 (26:52):
You know, just we're just here to like bring a
really good product for a good price, and we think
that that's a that's a segment that is underserved. You know,
I worked in like, as I told it, ultra fine wine,
but I also I was a sales rep and working
in you know, Brooklyn when the cool hip natural wine
movement happened, and.
Speaker 3 (27:14):
I had a lot of qualms with it.
Speaker 4 (27:15):
I thought that a lot of the wines in the
natural wine movement.
Speaker 3 (27:19):
Were overly banged up and overly.
Speaker 4 (27:23):
Ascetic, and there was this sense that if they weren't
like super funky, they weren't part of.
Speaker 3 (27:30):
This new elite. And I thought that it was like, Okay,
how to make wine less successible and more elitist.
Speaker 5 (27:38):
Is to make it like not taste very good and
expensive and expensive and also like hipster as hell, and like, no,
I'm not that person either, you know, so neither.
Speaker 3 (27:49):
I remember feeling a little bit.
Speaker 4 (27:50):
Shunned by that community because you know, I like a good,
classically made wine. I love the appellation system, which is
highly rejected by the cool kids. And you know, you know,
there's this evil governing body telling these like artists how
they can. But I'm like, okay, look, even Bosquiat learned
(28:11):
to paint before going disco, Like there is some level
and nobody in America knows if Keyanti is a place
are great, So like.
Speaker 3 (28:20):
Stop making it more confusing and more elitists, Like.
Speaker 4 (28:23):
Let's reel it back and like God bless them, Like
do whatever you want to do for me. I think
that like making it a little bit simple, but giving
honest and having honest juice and giving families an opportunity
to share.
Speaker 3 (28:37):
It, like in this marketing project is like exactly the
mission I want to be on.
Speaker 2 (28:42):
You know, I love it. So I want to know
a couple of things. How do you source? How much
of your time is spent sourcing and on the road
pandemic aside sourcing and meeting families to select the wines?
What is that process for you? And how many families
are you working with now?
Speaker 3 (28:58):
Gosh, like twenty four or something like that.
Speaker 4 (29:01):
And it is a little it's hard, you know, each
of them we've we've been studying whether or not we
should like use their printer or like centralized. You know,
there's just a lot of questions. There's a lot of
nuances right now, Like.
Speaker 3 (29:16):
There's so many like vintage changes, and the next.
Speaker 4 (29:20):
Vintage is you know, like not as maybe as good
as the latter, maybe it's better or it is kind
of it's.
Speaker 2 (29:27):
Been so challenging in some of these regions. I mean
some of them have been really hit by hail and
floods and this and that. It it's been a crazy
couple of years.
Speaker 4 (29:35):
Yeah, and like down south in twenty twenty one, in
south of France it's like really hot.
Speaker 3 (29:41):
So is that you know?
Speaker 4 (29:43):
And then prices are moving all over the place. So
if there's a zillion trillion moving parts, well I'm.
Speaker 2 (29:50):
Going to tell you, I'm going to bring up one
right now. We work with a lot of importers in
our consulting end of our life. Uh. And a very
good friend of ours, Frank Casella Casella Perry with me
and said, you know the big problem he has, and
he's a big guy, shipments, his shipments. He just wrote,
like his wines from South America. Three times they've been delayed,
(30:11):
and every time that there's a delay, he's paying for
the delay as well as the shipment.
Speaker 3 (30:16):
Right. No, we're the same.
Speaker 4 (30:18):
We have twenty terrible we have more than twenty containers
currently tied up that we can't get that are like
skipping the port.
Speaker 3 (30:27):
So this actually is a good segue into my next degree.
Speaker 4 (30:31):
Tell me well, I'm at Georgetown studying trade like policy,
and it all stemmed from my work on the Trump
tariffs on wine, which I was really deeply involved in
in getting them taken off, which we did, thank gosh.
Speaker 3 (30:50):
Yeah, that would have put my business. That would have
ruined my business. So I would have.
Speaker 2 (30:54):
Put you out of business, right, and a lot of
small small importers out of business right.
Speaker 3 (31:00):
One hundred percent.
Speaker 4 (31:00):
And some of my clients got whacked with like a
million dollar in fees in tariff fees. So and they're
really harmful to the US economy. This is I think
people don't understand how this works. We don't have jurisdiction
over French people. They're not paying the US government. It's US, right,
So it's it's like a sneaky, evil tax.
Speaker 3 (31:22):
And it was a very corrupt tax. Honestly.
Speaker 4 (31:24):
That was a that was that was a that was
a backscratch, that was a campaign donation favor. And I'm
I know that because my cousin was Treasury secretary under
Reagan and like runs this big part of KKR and
knows everyone and knows everything, and he tipped me off
about a year before the terriffs came on so there
was like it was it was an evil and corrupt
(31:47):
act and it hurt a lot of tiny, little micro businesses.
Speaker 3 (31:51):
And so we oh my god. Well, the average size
of a wine business is for people.
Speaker 4 (31:56):
So because because of all the regulations, because every state
has the right to I mean, they supersede the commerce
clause and they can charge out of state vendors. The
tariff between the states and licensing feed like it's it's
so incredibly fragmented, which is why Amazon had to buy
wholes to sell you a bottle of wine instead of
(32:17):
sell you a bottle of wine.
Speaker 2 (32:19):
Well, the whole system, the three tiered system, is confusing
to people. Then state by say there's different regulations, and
then on top of that federal regulations. It's tough. So
what are you going to do? You're studying public policy
at Georgetown also one of my alma maters, I mean,
I attended Georgetown School of Foreign Service. My degree was
international relations at two Lane, but I wanted to be
an international foreign correspondent or ambassador. It happened. But I
(32:40):
do global work with people who work around the world
and wine and food. So what are you going to
do with this? What do you plan to do with
this this master's in public policy, and kudos to you
two masters.
Speaker 3 (32:50):
I know it's crazy.
Speaker 4 (32:53):
I know they gave me the scholarship, so I like
couldn't say no, wow, uh none of scholarship, but it's enough.
Speaker 3 (33:01):
To incentivize me to come. What am I going?
Speaker 4 (33:05):
Well, Like this weekend, while everyone's having fun at the
Escafier event, I have to write a paper about the
Federal Maritime Commission and like what are they doing with
their thirty million dollar budget and how are they deploying it?
And where are they achieving their KPIs and you know,
how do we have they been audited and like has
(33:25):
you know? So I'm learning all that stuff and what
am I going to do ultimately? I don't know, But
I'm forty four. I think the business is it's booming
and we're doing really good and giving a lot of
opportunities to people.
Speaker 3 (33:38):
And so maybe by the time I'm fifty two, who.
Speaker 4 (33:41):
Knows, maybe I have a role in the government at
some point. So I don't know, we'll see.
Speaker 2 (33:47):
I got a lot of policy is a great you
know if you can again, you you're doing this because
you saw a situation that needs this better solution. So
I love the fact again where we're soul sisters and
solution driven and you know, endeavors and businesses. I think
it's great. I noticed that you have a lot of partnerships.
I don't you know you have a lot of partner distributorships.
(34:07):
Are they all partners or they how do you get
your winds out there? Basically because I saw you have
alignments with a lot of different companies.
Speaker 4 (34:16):
Yeah, I think that at some point I saw the
anger at some retailers towards those importers or you know,
wineries that we're selling direct to consumer. So I think
for me, I had to make a choice either I
do direct to consumer or I go through the regular
(34:37):
three tier.
Speaker 3 (34:38):
Channel, and I don't. I think some people try to
hybrid that, but we don't.
Speaker 4 (34:42):
I just I think that I just want to respect
that I'm not competing against our customers at large. So
you know, we made a really intentional choice to stay
in the regular three tier. So we have one customer
in every state and that would be our distributor. So
that's how it works. We're an importer, we don't self distribute.
(35:04):
I am a partner in the Housatonic.
Speaker 3 (35:07):
Wine Company of Connecticut.
Speaker 4 (35:09):
Yeah, so Connecticut, Vermont, but all of the rest of
our states we sell to the distributor. We act like
a partnership because it's not just like, you know, we're
deeply in business together.
Speaker 3 (35:25):
And then we come to the market.
Speaker 4 (35:27):
I have this fabulous new sales manager director, Jess Story.
Speaker 3 (35:32):
Who comes from Laurent Perrier Champagne.
Speaker 4 (35:34):
She came over to us and super excited about her
and she's just coming off a trip from Chicago today,
and so we're on the road a lot.
Speaker 2 (35:44):
How big is your team now, Mary, Well, we.
Speaker 3 (35:47):
Have let's say it's three full time, and then we
have outstarts a lot. So like all of our warehouse
and logistics, we own our own warehouse, but those that
work there are people that we kind of outsourced. So
full time W two is just three.
Speaker 4 (36:03):
But I mean there's so many people involved, lawyers and
their compliants personally.
Speaker 3 (36:07):
Yeah, and just you know, bookkeeper and so.
Speaker 4 (36:11):
But like full time three, we're now hiring for two
new positions. So we're looking for kind of a support
staff to our director of Operations, Jen Goldenthal, who was incredible,
and then we're also eventually going to try to look
for a serious director of marketing. So I'm kind of
building that.
Speaker 2 (36:30):
So it's mainly women, women own and run company.
Speaker 3 (36:35):
Well, no, I mean we're not, you know, we can't.
Speaker 4 (36:38):
We're we're very happy with the Civil Rights Code where
you can't tell somebody that you want gender.
Speaker 3 (36:44):
But no, I mean it just happened that way.
Speaker 2 (36:47):
That Yeah, I think it's great, though, I mean I
think it's great. You know, it's a tough business. I
don't think a lot of listeners who are not in
the industry realize how difficult and challenging is with all
the legal and the you know, there's a lot of
layers to start an import business. I've always been fascinated
by it, and you know, some people only see the
glamour part. You're going around traveling and looking and taste
some wine. But it is not glamorous. It's tough. It's
(37:09):
a very tough business. So I have to ask you.
So I first learned about you from the Eric as
a Moth article in the New York Times in October
twenty twenty one. I know that you did not have
a PR agency. My background is marketing PR and in
a very big way, working with businesses like yours and
I know that was a huge, huge coup. How did
(37:31):
that one article change things for you?
Speaker 3 (37:35):
Oh my gosh.
Speaker 4 (37:36):
Well, firstly, it was a hail Mary email that we
sent saying, hey, just thought we would let you know
we're here in the world and we're doing something, and
you know, I've been in the I sat next to
Eric Asima in like twenty oh seven.
Speaker 3 (37:53):
You know, and I asked him if he had remembered,
and he said, I had no idea. He had no
idea who I was, but I had met him.
Speaker 4 (38:01):
So just decided. We were thinking about like what do
we do pr wise, we were should we get an agency?
Speaker 3 (38:06):
Should we do it?
Speaker 4 (38:08):
And then we just said, let's just let's just pitch
a hail mare, you know, let's just throw a big
you know.
Speaker 3 (38:14):
So we did and it within the hour. He wrote back.
And I was sitting at dinner. I was a tail
of goat in DC.
Speaker 4 (38:20):
I remember, with some friends after a school week at Georgetown,
and I just like suddenly turned blue and like jumped up.
I had to run outside the restaurant and do like
a million jumping decks and scream because I just couldn't
believe it. He wrote right back and said, oh, no,
I know you're here.
Speaker 3 (38:37):
In fact, I've.
Speaker 4 (38:38):
Been buying your wines around New York and I'm gonna
taste them and if I like them, assuming I.
Speaker 3 (38:44):
Will, I'd like to write an article. And I was like, ah,
like in that and so it was.
Speaker 4 (38:50):
Like the longest six weeks of my life between that
email and the article. But it happened, or is like
you just two months? Yeah, it just it just happened,
And it was funny. At first people were like wow, yeah, okay, awesome,
and like we didn't see like a huge bump and
we were like, oh, we thought this was gonna like
(39:12):
we're gonna take over the world with this, but then
it crept up.
Speaker 3 (39:16):
So like that came out in October and.
Speaker 4 (39:19):
Like our November was good, it wasn't like amazing, but
then December was off the charts, and like this past
february's off the charts, and you know we'd still be
off the charts if we are boats would come in.
Speaker 2 (39:32):
So I'm sorry about that.
Speaker 3 (39:35):
Next call is the Federal Maritime Commission. What are you
guys doing? Like you gotta control those courts?
Speaker 2 (39:41):
Come on, yeah, that's a big, big problem. You know.
I feel bad for all of our import friends, importer
and producers, because we all the demand is here, the
supply is not because we have a supply chain problem
that has to get fixed and there's a lot of feed.
Again here we go back into the federal system. But
you know, I, I you know, I know that feeling.
Speaker 3 (40:00):
You know.
Speaker 2 (40:00):
And Eric does not respond to everybody. He's very arms
length with people. We've had him on this show. You know,
I've worked in the business a long time. His responding
to my emails was rare because he tends to hold
pr people at arms length, really long arms length. So
you did the right thing with the hell Mary. You know,
I get pitched a lot, Mary, and when I get
(40:21):
that personal email or LinkedIn, that's sincere and honest, I
take a look. I really do, because I've been in
those shoes. I've done my own self. Pr Okay, I
know how hard it is and how that sincere letter
really does make a difference, It really does. I know.
Now you're gonna have to scale up. So what are
(40:42):
you gonna do?
Speaker 3 (40:43):
Yeah, great question. Can we have coffee?
Speaker 2 (40:47):
We will in New Orleans? No, So but what is
your what is your plan?
Speaker 3 (40:52):
Well, we're like rockin' with sales.
Speaker 4 (40:55):
So that's on and we just open Mexico Canada. We've
been in Sweden and we just got into the UK
and with in a major way. So those things are starting.
Uh yeah, I think the plan and that's it. We're
we're having a company summit in New Orleans in like
(41:16):
two weeks so we can really write out the plan
and really come to turn. We're looking at like enhancing
our software programs and yeah, you know, just stuff like.
Speaker 3 (41:25):
That, like little tweaks.
Speaker 4 (41:27):
I mean, the five year plan is you know, get
to like I don't know, I mean I think it would.
Speaker 3 (41:36):
I think we could become the next big super brand.
Speaker 4 (41:40):
And I hate to say that to like all of
our cool, tiny little boutique retailers who like don't want
us to be like the big big, but you know what,
Like the fact is all of our wines look the same,
but they're all different, and like, yeah, we can keep growing.
We can have one hundred wines from one hundred farms
and that's not that's I mean with the right amount
(42:02):
of stuff, like our system is in place.
Speaker 3 (42:04):
Like.
Speaker 4 (42:06):
That would maybe get the Constellation brand or the Gallows
Like who is this Mary? Like if that's when I
succeed when the gallows are like, who is this Mary Taylor?
Speaker 3 (42:17):
And why is she stealing our market share?
Speaker 2 (42:19):
You know that would you have it said? If you're
going to sell to the many of our friends have
there's mixed feelings about that. But you know, I've I
was believe or not Mary. I actually helped launch Josh
Sellers for Bill Deutsch. I did. I consult the brand
for a really really long time. Love Bill. It's like
a million, multi million case why now?
Speaker 4 (42:38):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (42:38):
You know, Yeah, and I learned a lot about the
why behind it because there was a big why behind it. Yeah,
it's you know, some of the brands have sold out,
some don't. Yeah. I guess you have to write your
own exit plan. You have to write your next chapter
and your exit plan, right.
Speaker 3 (42:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (42:56):
I kind of would like to be like Bob's Redmill,
where like the employees owned company at some point you yeah,
and that would be.
Speaker 3 (43:03):
I don't I don't need like to.
Speaker 4 (43:05):
I don't have great demands on you know, I'm doing fine,
So I'm I.
Speaker 2 (43:11):
Like employee owned. I mean, if I were to leave
what I'm doing now as a you know, pittance writer,
posting my own show and consolidating and went to a company.
My requirements when I looked at what I would do
if I were to do it would be employee owned equity.
I know the word equity and equality, and I like equity.
So if you can create a company where it's employee
(43:34):
owned and everybody has equity, you will have a loyal
base and team and it will it will grow from
within and grow without. And I truly believe that's the
way to go versus selling out.
Speaker 3 (43:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (43:50):
I mean, like one of obviously my biggest expense is payroll,
but like we don't we don't cheat. We're not super
cheap with payroll, Like we covered all like we have
four oh one came back.
Speaker 3 (44:00):
I mean we're pretty young to have.
Speaker 4 (44:01):
That level of like one hundred percent healthcare really good plan.
Speaker 2 (44:06):
Like there's a smart plan. It's a smart plan. I
did that with my company. I always said to my staff, Mary,
I may not pay the best, but you're gonna have
the best benefits, best working experience ever.
Speaker 3 (44:19):
Yeah. Well and also gate Yeah, and we're like pretty
much remote. We don't have a place where we all
get together.
Speaker 4 (44:27):
So so a high level of motivation is key and
that self starter.
Speaker 3 (44:34):
So I think that really motivating when you're making six
figures versus like mid five, you know what I mean, Like, oh, that's.
Speaker 4 (44:41):
And we definitely like, you know, my friend in Connecticut
works for a travel company called Talk and they're so
great and I know that they are key people who
have been there for like, you know, ten plus years,
are like they're making half a million a year, you know,
and I just think that's so great of the company
to give these big salaries to people that deserve them.
(45:04):
So you know, maybe that's going to be the future.
So yeah, I mean, we're just right now. It's pretty
like I have to reconcile the books right now.
Speaker 2 (45:13):
You got to get your back in ready, you got
to get to sale. And you know, for you right now,
it's making sure that that supply chain situation is addressed.
It's about getting the technology ready because the technology has
to be perfect in terms of because righting everybody, and
I'll give everybody the website. Now it's interesting. It's empty
dot wine. I guess you did the url thing dot wine,
(45:35):
so www dot mt dot wine and you can learn
more about Mary and the wines. Everyone I've had. David says,
I'm in love with you. I mean, it's kind of
funny you have this thing for me. I said, but
there's something about now that you know that you're New Orleans, Georgia.
We have so much in common. I can't wait to
get together. Person. I think the wines are terrific. I had,
you know, I was. I'd read about you, and then
(45:56):
I got to Chattanooga and New Orleans and I kept
seeing the wine at Whole Foods, up on them at
Whole Foods. And then there's a restaurant here at the
Flying Squirrel, uh, and they have a different selection, and
I kept saying, wow, this is you know, I have
a very refined palette, and I know when I can
taste teroa fairly easily versus every day, what the hell
is this? It could be anywhere wines, And that's what
(46:19):
spoke to me, besides the simplicity of the label. And
just wow, she gives the vineyar on some credit. You know,
those poor people, the farmers, you know, anyone that does that.
It's like awesome. So I think you're on a really
great trajectory that you can write if you you know,
you just got to make sure you're not overstretched. So
(46:39):
it just gets.
Speaker 3 (46:40):
Yeah, right, Well, that's the thing. Like, and I apologize
I was yelled at.
Speaker 2 (46:44):
You, like I really, I know, I you know, I
said that to listen. I said that once because I
was that person. I have been that. But great Adam
Tohani and I'll share this with you, the great Adam Toahani,
one of the great restaurant designers in the world. I
came down for a meeting, said I'm just really crazed,
and he just said, Melanie, listen to me. You I
(47:05):
have given you my time. I am busy too. You
are never too busy to meet with somebody who is
giving you their time. And I got to tell you,
I was humbled.
Speaker 3 (47:16):
By that, totally, totally.
Speaker 2 (47:19):
So yeah, yeah, just a word, It's like it was
a humbling experience. I learned a big lesson.
Speaker 3 (47:25):
Yeah. Well, I mean that's the thing.
Speaker 4 (47:27):
Like people, so I travel all the time, just constantly,
and like it's too much. You know, last year I
was on the road forty five weeks of the year
and like I've put on wait and I don't love
you know, I'm just kind of I'm excited I'm going
to but like so the company, everybody in the company
(47:48):
understands that like one of the goals for the company
is that I don't over extend myself.
Speaker 3 (47:53):
And so there's so many people that are like, oh
my god, can you come back and we'll do a
dinner in like somewhere.
Speaker 4 (48:00):
Like last Friday, I did a dinner in Solomon, Maryland,
and it was really hard to get to and I
had to spend an extra night on the road and
like extend my flight and missed my Saturday beloved Pilates
class and like nazee my pets, and I was like, sure,
I'd love to and then it was like it was
an okay event, you know, and it was just a
lot for that and so I was just like, I
(48:22):
don't know, at what point can I I'm.
Speaker 2 (48:24):
Gonna give you some advice before we wrap up the show,
because I've been that person and a lot of what
I do is to help people who are entrepreneurs who
you're gonna learn to say no. It's hard to say no,
but I've learned to do a cost benefit analysis. And
you're a business person, what is the cost to me
time wise and costs wise to go to this event
and what will the benefit be in terms of bottom
(48:46):
line sales? Because awareness. As you have learned from the
eric asthma. Awareness and sales are different things. So creating
awareness and this will be great networking, a great awareness,
that's just great. But does that pay the bills? And
it's a tough decision because you want to be out
there promoting the brand. But then get some great brand ambassadors,
you know, start working on your brand ambassador program and
(49:07):
and and let go a bit because you got to
you know, you got to be the CEO.
Speaker 4 (49:13):
Totally, totally and thank you. And I just you know,
I might mention like I I've seen a few really
talented why people, you know, burn out and die at
age sixty, you know, And I don't want to be
that person at all.
Speaker 3 (49:29):
I really don't want to be that person.
Speaker 2 (49:31):
I won't be that person if you put the if
you put the right checks and balances in place. And
I was that person. I did have a health scare
as a result of overdoing it. So I learned the
hard way. So I'm giving you my best advice. Create
that plan now, like your business plan, create your self
care management plan while you're growing your business, so you
(49:51):
have that strategy as well, so you don't have that
experience because you know where it could go, and you
know what you can do to stop it. I really
enjoyed speaking with you. You've been You've given me your time,
so thank you, because I know it's busy. We've come
to the end. I just want to let everybody know
again that we've been talking with Mary Taylor. Her she
(50:11):
is an importer of wines from grower vineurons. Uh, mainly
in Europe, right, do you have any South America?
Speaker 3 (50:19):
No, all Europe, but we've just sat in Germany, so
we are.
Speaker 2 (50:23):
That's great. I think German terrific. So you can. You
can buy them at retail and off and on premise,
so check the website www dot mt dot wine. And
I can't wait to meet you in New Orleans and
have a glass of wine with you and and talk further.
So thank you very much for your time.
Speaker 3 (50:43):
Again, thank you, Melanie. And yeah, we definitely have to
get together. And I thank you for Kata. All right,
take care great you too,
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