Wine & Spirits - October 2020 - 12

REMEMBRANCES
BARRY
STERLING
1929 -2020
Barry Sterling had already led a full life when, at 50, he and his wife,
Audrey, released their first sparkling wine. It was 1979, a decade after
they had moved their young family to Paris, three years after their
search for a vineyard led them to a place not far from where Audrey
used to summer, in the cool, misty desert hills of Sonoma's coast. Rodney Strong had begun to plant a vineyard there, which they bought
and expanded, restoring the rambling 19th-century clapboard farmhouse as their home. Visiting with Barry in the patio behind his house,
above the rose garden cascading down the hill that he had planted and
tended, you might not guess that he had been at the top of his class at
Stanford Law School or ran his own corporate law firm in Los Angeles.
He was quiet and welcoming, thoughtful and kind.

Maybe Barry and Audrey were successful with their sparkling wine
because it grew in the right place, a collection of hills covered in a
patchwork of vines, looking like patterns in a Victorian quilt book, a
place where morning mists catch the sun in momentary rainbows, as
if the air and the sky were also part of the plan-a plan to grow a fresh
and optimistic wine, to bring the joy of Paris to his home in California,
and then to capture both in a beautiful evocation of the vine-and-rose
strewn hills called Joy. The wine shares its name with Barry's daughter,
Joy, who now runs the company, working with her brother Lawrence,
who manages the vines. -joshua greene

TONY
TERLATO
193 4-2020
The first time I met Tony Terlato, it was 1983 and I was earning a
pauper's wage at a local publishing company. He promised to double
my salary after I had correctly named the first growths of Bordeaux,
showed off my French and promised that I could learn Italian. It was
an unusual job interview, to be sure, but characteristic of Tony, who'd
grown a small local distributor of Italian products on Chicago's South
Side into one of the foremost importers in the US, with enviable headquarters on Chicago's North Shore.
Knowing the status of fine Italian wines today, it is hard to imagine
the pioneering work that Terlato did to bring top Italian wines into
the United States. When, in a restaurant in Alto Adige in 1979, he
sensed promise in the marketability of pinot grigio, he ordered every
example on the list to try. Out of 18 wines, Santa Margherita stood
out to him, and the rest is history (for decades, it was one of the most

WINE & SPIRITS

OCTOBER 2020

popular white wines in the W&S Annual Restaurant Poll). He went on
to open the US market to producers such as Pio Cesare, Il Poggione,
Frescobaldi and Renato Ratti.
A lover of gastronomy, Tony often forged friendships with winemakers in the cantina-like dining room above the company warehouse,
where he cooked homemade pasta for a rollcall of famous guests.
Today, the company boasts a portfolio of more than 60 brands from
12 countries, including the Terlato's own wineries in California.
Tony is survived by his wife Jo, to whom he was married for 65 years,
and sons Bill and John, who succeeded him in the business.
-Fiona Morrison, MW

Wine & Spirits - October 2020

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