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Andy Pates:

It's getting hot in here, so pick up all your checks and go sell the wine. Make sure your wine is cold. Hello, and welcome to Samples for Monday, 06/29/2026. This is the twenty sixth episode. We are at the halfway point, ladies and gentlemen.

Andy Pates:

26 episodes of the most important mandatory listening wine sales, spirit sales, beverage sales podcast in the nation. Thank you for listening even though it is required. So just a few things to go over this week. It's the end of the month. Happy inventory Monday.

Andy Pates:

Happy last selling day of June '2. We're gonna talk about q three. Coming up, wanna give a shout out to Tina Torres on her tenth Creamiversary. Tina, thank you so much. Thank you for all you do for Cream, your patience, your professionalism.

Andy Pates:

You are the calm of the storm, and we all appreciate everything that you do. It is a hectic business, and the money is important, and your help with the collection of it and the communication of it to our clients in a customer service way is very much appreciated. I also wanted to, see how everyone's doing with the last, shipping day of the month. Hopefully, you guys are looking good in your dollar goal completion. Hopefully, you're not doing that four delays of math at the end of the month.

Andy Pates:

That definitely should have been done at the beginning of the month. But, this is going into fourth of July weekend going into q three. We are underneath a heat dome. So summer is here. Index over a 100 hot town summer in the city.

Andy Pates:

And just some tips, I'm sure most of you know this, but selling wine when it's hot out is not easy. I highly recommend a cooler for the trunk. I also recommend that you get some plastic water bottles after you're done drinking the water. Put some tap water in there, freeze it, and then in your soft wine bag that holds six to eight bottles, you basically focus on selling four bottles. So in those sleeves, you got two bottles of wine, one of the frozen water bottles that is the shape of a wine in between, keeping your appointments cold, refreshing, and focused.

Andy Pates:

Also, if you're gonna have a cooler in the trunk, don't crush the bag of ice. Just keep the bag in there. Lay a towel over the bag of ice, and then put the wines on top of the towel. Labels up. This will prevent any sort of label scuffing, any sort of, bubbles that come in the presentation on the the bottles of wine, and then you can transfer those in and out of your wine bags.

Andy Pates:

Obviously, you want your reds as cold as possible, and so probably not the best idea to show high alcohol, tannic reds this week. Keep it on the chillable side, the fresh side, and then Italian whites all day every day. A few other things to discuss. Focus. We talked about it at Friday's meeting.

Andy Pates:

Some of you all were not there on vacation or traveling or not able to make it for a variety of reasons, but I just wanted to let you know for sampling this week, we have finalized some of them. Reventos is going to be on focus for both q three and q four as well as be a supplier goal with rep goals. There's a lot of skews to focus on. I think the best thing is to help us get back to the glory days with the Reventos Blanc de Blancs, the DENIT, and if you choose to, the Finca or one of the, what would be considered their, I don't know, parcel selections, terroir selections, like the Texturas, for example. And then Consommoi all day every day, La Rosa.

Andy Pates:

This is La Rosa season, Montagna for sparkling, and then Charello, Charello, Charello, and then anything else that you're feeling. The other wines from Reventos, the Pepe Reventos and Masa Serraldos are certainly extra credit, but, you know, we need to put up some some big time numbers, some makeup for some lost year to date business, which I'm confident that we can do. The Haute Borg, Nicolas Chauble and his brother from Grand Lieu in Muscadet. They also have, some delicious, inexpensive imported by Cream, Know Your Importer, cream imports, Sauvignon, Rose of Grolot, Gamay. So I think that that will be fun to focus on.

Andy Pates:

Le Potatzine, even though the super sexy Lirripi is back in stock and ready to Lirripi out of the warehouse along with the constant Mastroianni, we do need some attention on Lepo Tizzini. I've seen some, recent sales, and they are very much appreciated, so keep going with that. And then Baron Cornacchia, the Casanova Trebbiano needs to get some sales going. I don't expect it to be as much as the Montepulciano, which I think is maybe one of the best, if not the best wine values, in Abruzzo, certainly in Italy and certainly in the Chicago market in our book. And then, for extra credit, definitely need everyone focusing on the Poggio Verano range with the price adjusted now only $2.80 frontline and $2.64 net.

Andy Pates:

John went through the sake of focus for q three at Friday's meeting, Solanoi in one ten. And then, of course, the domestic core four from Bedrock, Old Vine Zin, Lulu, Rose, Sauvignon Blanc, and Cabernet Sauvignon. If we can't sell those as a company in this marketplace with our reputation, the quality of wine, the fairness of pricing, and the reputation of everyone involved. I don't know what to say, so let's get after it. And then spirits, we've, added under, not only spirits, but Sul as well.

Andy Pates:

Hana Makali is going to be on focus. That can be the cans. That can be the bottles. Alice is coming back to town again, but I think it'll be good for, extra attention on that. And then Gotha is a brand.

Andy Pates:

For those not familiar, Gotha, those are the super cool imported by Oliver McCrum spirits that some of them have the Adriatic Sea water added for extra umami salinity to balance all those flavors as the mixologist would say. So that'll be a lot of fun to, sell those. And that goes for the vermouth, the alco, the blue amaro, the maniacs mini miniicus. I don't know how to say it, but I'm gonna learn by the end of the quarter. And then the, Sete Metza Sete Metza, artichoke, the the carcofo.

Andy Pates:

Those are all going to be on focus. Pick your pleasure, pick your poison. Reminder that the spirits shelf rack, repository is now in the meeting room on the beautiful shelf that we have. We needed to make space because we're adding to the team. So those are something to, focus on as well.

Andy Pates:

And then summer sale, going to be updated weekly. I met with the PMs this morning. We're gonna be adding a lot of new things. Some of you have gotten after it really early, and I really appreciate that. Shout out to you for jumping on this.

Andy Pates:

This is an incredible opportunity to help your clients boost their margin. You know, we're gonna have this sale going on for the summer with the additional one on five with the r one on five rules. If you don't know, please ask. And then, that's gonna be updated on a weekly basis. We are also going to have a an office open house tasting sale, which will feature some of the sale items in addition to some new items and, some old favorites that may or may not be on focus.

Andy Pates:

So it's going to be each portfolio manager is gonna pick six items. So that'll be 30 items open, open house style at the office on Tuesday, July 14, also otherwise known as Bastille Day. When you come by, and get your samples, come through and taste through all the wines. You are not required to be there for the length of the tasting, but if you have clients coming, it would be greatly appreciated if you were there, helping to close the deal and get some ship dates on those items. And then we'll do another open house in August, September, October, possibly November, December.

Andy Pates:

It'll be in the middle of the month to avoid the inventory blues of some of our buyers or the excuses that some of the buyers make for not buying, and then it won't coincide with any sort of holiday Monday, Tuesday issues. So that is all I got. I was gonna talk about the great wines of Bea from Umbria, from the small idyllic town of Montefalco, not too far from Assisi. Yes. That Assisi from, Saint Francis fame near the town of Spoleto, but we'll talk about that next time.

Andy Pates:

I wanted to talk about the Monasterio. It is Cisternia. God. I really gotta work on my pronunciations. And then we'll talk about the difference between jump Jampero Bea and Paulo Bea.

Andy Pates:

You know, why don't we just do that now? So Jean Perraubea is the son of Paulo Baia, the founder of Baia, and he has with his architectural background, he took over the estate when, his father passed away, and then his uncle, was running the estate. And with his architectural, background, created a state of the art winery that I had the pleasure of visiting last year. And it's designed to maximize natural light, to maximize the subterranean cooling, the gravity flow. It just also looks really, really beautiful.

Andy Pates:

It has sort of the helix design of the way that they have the drying vats for some of the, Pasito wines and some of the eight drying that they do. At the top of the cellar, there is, basically this portal of light at the very, very top that, illuminates most of the space without the use of electricity. There's a geothermal situation going on, as I mentioned, and some of the vines are, just outside of the winery, which is just outside of the town of Montefalco. And then when you see the Bayer wines with the green label, there's Paulo Bayer, which is an homage to the to, the father. And then when you see the Jampero Bayer, that's Jampero's the the sort of the neon green labels.

Andy Pates:

Those are his wines that he's making that are I don't wanna say they're more experimental or more natty, because there are some Bayer wines, you know, that are no sulfur and that, you know, definitely have that recognizable VA lift and preservation. But there's also some, you know, classical wines. I think BEA in general, Paolo BEA as a domain, you don't really have to have the natural wine conversation. These are just wines that are fresh and lifted and just have so much energy from an area that's just famous for making big tannic, Segretino de Monofalco. Oh my God.

Andy Pates:

This is the most tannic wine in Italy. These wines are not that. It's almost like the way that we have the Graziano Pras, Amarone, and Valpolicella. Those are definitely different from typical Amarone and Valpolicella. They have acidity, they have freshness, they have balance.

Andy Pates:

For the most part, they're lower in ABV. They have a lot of, you know, delicious primary flavors, but even the Amarone from Pra, it just in a blind tasting, it is gonna stand out and be more primary and vertical and on the upward swing and have less of that, you know, raisin and and and Amarone style of that, that pasido, the way that they do the repaso and get the the concentration, the sugars, and and in some cases, you know, a lot more structure, but it's not without its cost, palate wise because the wines can sometimes be high in alcohol and boozy and raisin. Well, that's not Graziano and Pras. So we have more Pras on order. More on that later.

Andy Pates:

There's a new cuvet that I'm gonna post in Slack from Pras called Wild, which is their spontaneous it's organic, spontaneous yeast. And, one particular parcel, the Ponsara parcel, which is, near their, new I don't know. Just outside of the winery, there's this new building that they've turned into more of like a hospitality center and a kind of like an agriturismo, and it's a tower, and you can kinda oversee a lot of the Veneto. So Ponsaro is not too far from that, but that's in, Manta Alpone, which is the more volcanic side of Suave, where all the way up the other side of the Suave slope past the Castle Of Suave and the cooperative of Suave Bola all the way at the very, very, very, very top. That is Castellcorino, and that's where Filippi is from.

Andy Pates:

So we have two great, Suave producers, that are making, you know, different wines with different terroirs, that I'm super proud of, and they're both imported by the great cream imports. But back to Bea, so Paolo Bea started Vini Veri. Vini Veri is a natural wine fair that was a reaction to Vinitally where a lot of producers that were working naturally, whether they were doing zero zero or they were low intervention, they needed a venue and a place. So outside of Verona, there's a town of Chirea and this really cool brutalist designs. I think it's like a community college or it's some sort of like a culinary school.

Andy Pates:

Once a year outside of Verona during Vinitaly, they have this wine fair, and Paolo Bia was one of the founding members and still attends with his family, and it's grown to be a lot of producers. And many of the producers that we work with, like Cacina de la Rose or Bartolo Moscarello or Vodapivich or, I mean, on and on, just look it up, Vini Veri in terms of producers that show there. That's the natural wine fair that coexists with Vin and Vin Natur Favarita, that's in the town of Sorrego, not too far from Vicenza, which is also outside of Verona. And so, you know, these fairs, these off swath esque fairs, have started to become really, really important. And Jean Pierre O'Bea, is one of the founders of that.

Andy Pates:

And then with met him there. I I I it was the first time I I met him and we had a conversation about Monasterio, the Nunn wines, and we started talking about it and I said, hey. So and it was a long line by his table and he just really just wanted to talk to me about Chicago and cream and then also, you know, my questions about Monasterio. You know, he said a lot of people think that I, you know, found this project and decided to like, you know, take it over and start making wine. They approached him for a number of years.

Andy Pates:

I mean, he was saying like over ten years, they were saying, You really gotta go look at this project in Lazio. You really gotta go meet with the nuns and look because they're making communion wine that is stellar. They're making this wine that is is incredible. And so finally, he went to visit and he was so inspired by the thoughtfulness of the farming, organic farming for essentially not only communion wine, but just wine that they were selling in the local town. And the way that they were making low intervention wine without additives, it really inspired him.

Andy Pates:

And so they asked him to, you know, help consult in which he did, but he said, you know, I didn't really have to do anything. They had everything there. They were making great wine. I'd sure I helped them with, you know, finding them an importer with Rosenthal. I helped them with a little bit of the design, the aesthetic of their packaging and the naming of the wines, but, you know, the raw material was there.

Andy Pates:

And, you know, the nuns deserve all the credit, for what happened at that monastery. So, we have those wines in stock. If you're not familiar with Canobium and Ryscome, you should because they're some of the best wines in the Rosenthal portfolio, if I'm being completely, honest and transparent. I think that, you know, Bea and Monterio just shine as beacons in that Italian portfolio. And then Bea is more of an allocation situation or it's available, but it's expensive.

Andy Pates:

So don't you know, if you wanna sample it or you want to show the lineup with clients, please let Aaron know or Andrew Mulligan, our man about town, or myself. We can go in and and and and tell the story that I'm telling you. This is a this is an important historic producer from a beautiful area, Umbria, and then also the Latvian situation. So I don't know if I covered everything that I wanna cover this week, but it is hot, and you have to get your samples in by I think the cutoff for samples is 03:30. So I might be I might have gone past that, but you certainly can do your samples, another time.

Andy Pates:

I gave you a lot to talk about. I appreciate you listening, and, stay cool and and keep selling. Ciao.