Collavini Merlot

[Botafogo]

Nice try at a backpeddle, Fabio, but what you said:

>> YOU should better concentrate on the wine You choose... TREVINI sicilian reds ... never heard about it... <<

was a CLEAR and unambiguous challenge to the quality of our tastes and the quality of the wine.

I only listed those people to make sure they were people you HAD heard of. We are the largest importers and marketers of the fabulous and vastly overlooked wines of Lombardy in the Western Hemisphere, featuring the wines of nearly every cantina in the Valtellina, six serious producers from Oltrepò Pavese and even three different labels of Sangue di Giuda. We have decamped from Toscana in a big way in favor of little known (in the US) wines of comparable quality and much better value from the Marche and Emilia-Romagna like Serenelli, Ciu Ciu, Mecella, Stefano Ferrucci and Podere dal Nespoli. We sell more Arneis than Chardonnay and more Bonarda than Sangiovese.

From your zona, we were the first people to bring wines from De Lucia, Cantine de Pietratorcia, D'Ambra, Orazio Rillo, Cantina Marino and BIOS in Parco Cilento and many more to the American Market. As to "living on the wine business" being an apparently evil thing, everyone from the wineries to the distributors to the retailer do so and if they did not you would not have any wine to drink let alone write about.

If you would calm down a little you would probably see we have much in common, Roberto