Skurnik Unfiltered

“Everything in nature is balanced. Everything. The only thing unbalanced is the human being, and the problem is the ego. Every producer should take a step back, two steps back, maybe ten.” – Andrea Sottimano

To Andrea Sottimano, wine is not about the winemaker. It isn’t even about the grape—it’s about using both winemaker and grape to express soil. When all things are equal, from farming to lab to cellar practices, the differences that emerge indicate differences of terroir, even at a distance as little as 200 meters. The distinct Cottá, Currá, Fausoni, Pajoré and Bas...

“It seems that every five years or so, whiskey prices take a bump, so people say, 'Oh, let’s get into Armagnac.' And they buy a number of Armagnacs, but they eventually go back to whiskey again. The question is, why do they do that, and what can Armagnac do to retain that customer?” – Charles Neal 

Like Champagne, a handful of big houses dominate Cognac. Also like Champagne, it's the small, independent producers that offer more compelling expressions—and they have better stories to tell. Charles Neal has devoted his life to telling those stori...

“Apples were actually a big part of our history as New York State and as a colony before that. We like to, in our own way, continue that tradition in just a small way, to showcase the wonderful things that grow in New York State.” – Yoni Rabino

Yoni Rabino and Noah Braunstein describe Neversink Spirits as a pan-New York company. From the Finger Lakes to the Catskills to the Lower Hudson Valley, the two lifelong friends source the state's most iconic orchard fruit to make a range of apple-based distillates, including brandy, eau-de-vie, an aperitif, and eve...

"Giving meaning to what we pour is really important because otherwise it's just liquid. And this is not only for spirits—this is more like a lifestyle. You've got to give meaning to everything that you do so it feels special, because once you have the picture of the person, once you know the name, it doesn't taste the same—it actually tastes better." – José María Dondé Rangel 

For our final installment celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month, Skurnik's Mexico Spirits Portfolio Manager, Justin Lane Briggs, sits down with José María “Chema” Dondé Rangel, the visionary fou...

“Every year, the terroir is changing, and we, ourselves, are changing. I’m sure that the Federico of 2026 is not the same Federico as 2022. It’s a way to see ourselves in time, our different vintages. It’s an incredible thing. It’s the magic of wine.” – Federico Gambetta

Every vigneron knows that the only constant is change. Federico Gambetta feels this everywhere—in the vineyard, in his wines, and in himself. 

The tradition of wine in Argentina is also a story of change. In this episode, Fede explains how a period of tropical cocon...

"The most important thing we've done is establish a soul to everything we do and a why behind each of our cuvées. We want to remind everyone who has a glass of this wine what it's about—it's about the people we're supporting and the quality of our farming. I can't imagine running a vineyard any other way." – Pete Stolpman

Much has been said about sustainability practices in the wine business, often focused on clean farming and eco-friendly packaging. Rarely does the term include sustainability when it comes to people—how a business seeks t...

“I’m very passionate about my country and the potential of Argentina. Everyone was talking about Uco Valley and forgot our roots. It’s not just Malbec for me—I decided to start with traditional places to show old vines, and I want to keep this heritage.” – Matías Riccitelli

70 years ago, Chandon planted Chenin Blanc, of all grapes, in Patagonia, of all places. With hardly any infrastructure or full-time farmers to support the extremely remote vineyard, the project was abandoned after just a few years. The juice, they agreed, wasn't worth the squeeze.

The vine...

"This industry is way more antique than everybody thinks. This is an indigenous beverage, an indigenous spirit. We are using the same techniques as the ancient ones because that's what we learned, and that's what the people who live here know. They don't know how to cut corners." – Javier Jimenez

Javier Jimenez can trace his roots back 15 generations in the Tecuane Ravine, a culturally significant canyon in Jalisco that is home to a UNESCO World Heritage site. Before European contact, indigenous people carved large circular pits into the volcanic rock here for making vino de...

"That's the beauty of working with Pinot Noir: it's an incredibly transparent-to-site wine; it shows where it's grown. A perfect wine for me shows that it could not have come from anywhere else, while still keeping things food-friendly, medium-weight, delicious, and beautiful." – Catherine Kistler

When you grow up in Sonoma, the daughter of a living wine legend, you have a knack for noticing things that others tend to miss. Subtle tasting notes among Pinot Noir blocks stand out boldly. Farming knowledge that took your father a lifetime to learn is innately ingrained in how yo...

"We will always seek out handcrafted products that are made by people, by families, that have the greatest quality at every price point. That will always be the ethos of who we are.” – Oren Simon

Smooth transitions are crucial to sustaining a family business. Across our portfolio, we champion estates passed on from generation to generation. They last because their work is not just what they do—it’s who they are. They know that the vines they tend will produce the finest wines long after they’re gone, and they seem to feel a stronger...

"It's really exciting to be a part of this new industry that's learning at a rapid pace—and watch out, because there are so many people coming who are making really exciting wines. But what sets Wiston apart is the fact that we're family-owned. We're here to learn and understand and make quality sparkling wine." – Marcus Rayner-Ward

Though the increasing prevalence of English wine might feel like a novel side effect of the day's changing climate, Vitis vinifera first took root in the British Isles in the year 43 AD; wherever ancient Romans went, so went wine. Since then...

"Massaya means twilight. It's 'el masa.' When you are walking in the street in a village in Lebanon or in Beirut, you say 'masa el-kher,' evening of grace, good wishes, to a passing by person." – Sami Ghosn

The story of Lebanese wine is a story of perpetual revival. One of the oldest wine regions in the world, this well-protected and resource-rich section of the Levant has been producing and trading wine for millennia—as a global currency by the Phoenicians, in secret by persecuted Christians under Ottoman rule, and in spite of viol...

“We use fermentation to help you taste tea in a different way, to refract it into something that can live in the same category as wine or higher-end spirits, where you’re tasting this storytelling that tea can do—of places, of regions, of people around the world.” – Graham Pirtle

Fermentation can do many things. It can preserve our produce, rise our bread, give us a buzz, and multiply subtle flavors. That last function is the one that most fascinates Graham Pirtle and Young Stowe, the co-founders of Unified Ferments.

From their 4-person fa...

"Vermouth rosso is like the skeleton in a human body. It keeps the Boulevardier, the Manhattan, and the Negroni cocktails standing. Our goal was to produce Vermouth di Torino, which is the peak of the pyramid of vermouths." – Vittorio Zoppi

Growing up in Genoa, Vittorio Zoppi was born with an instinctive appreciation for good food and wine and a passion for all things Italian. As a young man, he made a career out of connecting Italian wine estates with American importers, and by the mid-2010s, savvy American drinkers were looking for craft spirits an...

"Wine is a culture of the people. This Frappato represents a link between the past and the future." – Gaetana Jacono

Today’s guest is Gaetana Jacono, the woman who pioneered a new style of Sicilian wine in the province of Ragusa. Before she conquered the market with her perfumed, elegant, and enticing wines from Valle dell’Acate, Sicilian wines were typically bold, oaky, Nero d’Avola-based wines pushing 15% alcohol. Her terroir revealed a more delicate and playful expression that redefined expectations and captured the attention of the wine world.

In this episode, Gaetana...

“From an historical point of view, every century has always had a crisis, but wine has always survived. Wine culture will always survive. We still have a bright future ahead. There is no doubt.” – Andreas Wickhoff

Climate change has arrived, and weird things are happening in Europe. Hailstorms in March. Bud break in October. Deadly flooding during harvest. Despite it all, Andreas Wickhoff's radiant optimism is rooted in an historical perspective, that wine must survive. 

At the helm of Austria's iconic Kamptal estate, Weingut Bründlmayer, Andreas directs the precision farming and careful...

"I love the Europeans for believing that their wines can't be emulated, but if that's a truth, Americans need to have that too. Zinfandel is the one grape that California does better than anywhere else in the world. And I'm proud to say that just as a Burgundian should be able to say that about Pinot Noir." – Tegan Passalacqua

This week's guest is Tegan Passalacqua, the legendary winemaker for Turley Wine Cellars and founder of Sandlands. As a leading historian on old-vine California viticulture, Tegan discusses his mission to protect centuries-old vineyards from being lo...

“I think there’s this moment in wine now where people are being more honest with themselves. I want to make the wines I believe in and that I want to consume, and then I’m going to find my audience; I’m not going to make wine for an audience. For me, it’s more about a job well done.” – Justin Willett

When people talk about wines from Santa Barbara, they're probably talking about the Santa Ynez Valley. But the range of varieties and microclimates found here makes the valley perhaps the most densely divers...

"We're in the business of making agricultural wines, and I think we need to make a distinction right here between agricultural wine and industrial wine. A lot of these vineyards that have these really amazing histories attributed to them also have people with interesting histories. It's not selling the widgets—it's teasing out the stories about these very authentic places and these interesting people and then being able to share those stories." – Matt Licklider 

Twenty years ago, LIOCO was founded to disrupt the California wine status quo of high-alcohol, oak-heavy bottles, proving instead that Calif...

"Spirits, when they are at their best, are about facilitating joy and connection and building community. If we can be a small part of that in any way, then I think we've done our job." – Tom Jackson

June is Pride Month, but Tom Jackson likes to say he's Supergay for 365 days a year. After an advertising career and founding the iconic GAYLETTER magazine, Tom launched Supergay Spirits with a flagship vodka. It was a natural place to start; vodka is known as "gay water" for its popularity among the queer community. He wanted to of...

“If you want to make exceptional wine, you have to feel at home because it’s about so many little things—little things that you have to observe and feel and catch over the season to make the wine. It’s always important to be there and to feel the place.” – Nicola Libelli

Nicola Libelli feels at home in the Pfalz. Though he was born and raised in Northern Italy, a taste of 1992 Merkelbach Kinheimer Rosenberg Riesling Spätlese completely changed the course of his life, compelling him to move to Germany and learn everything ab...

“I think joyful, colorful people can still make beautiful, classically-styled, serious wines.” – Corinne Rich

The standard California playbook of Chardonnay and Cabernet often overshadows a rich history of alternative varieties perfectly suited for the modern climate.

This week’s episode features two guests: Corinne Rich and Katie Rouse, the partners and winemakers behind Birdhorse. Balancing their own independent label with day jobs at respected wineries, they discuss how they built a brand from scratch, choosing to champion forgotten, climate-resilient Mediterranean grapes through close grower partnerships rather than traditional landownership.

The conversa...

"As a brand, you have to have an identity. It's easy to just make products, but why you exist is much more important that what you produce. The "why" for us is recreating this classic New York rye style that hadn't been around for over 100 years." – Alex Clark

The Battle of Brooklyn began over stolen fruit in a neighborhood watermelon patch, a piece of borough history that now inspires one of New York’s most distinctive spirits.

In this week's episode, Whiskey Specialist James Pellingra talks with Alex Clark, founder of Brooklyn’s Fort...

The biggest spirits event of the year is right around the corner. Bar Convent Brooklyn is an annual 2-day festival of tastings and seminars from the best in the spirits business.

In preparation for Skurnik’s third appearance at BCB, we’re giving you a bonus episode inside our spirits portfolio with Adam Schuman (Spirits Portfolio Director) and Amanda Elder (Spirits Content & Education Manager). In this episode, they survey the beverage landscape from the early 2010s cocktail boom to the spike in demand for consumer education during COVID lockdown, and how Skurnik is meeting the moment in a wo...

"If you're really tapped into what wine is, giving back is a very natural extension of that. You realize that wine exists in this harmony with its environment, and if you're not giving back out to that environment, you're like the dead end in the ecosystem. It's important that the ecosystem keeps moving around and that good keeps flowing in all directions." – Noah Dorrance

Noah Dorrance's philosophy is clear and consistent: wine is connection. Paying close attention to the weather and the rhythms of the seasons connects him to the health of the planet. Do...

"Perfection in a spirit is to do things very consistently and don't change things. I'm certainly not perfect, but I think what we're doing at the distillery is close to the best whisky I've made for a long, long time. It's grain to glass, and it's all grown and made in New York State." – Shane Fraser

Tenmile Distillery in Wassaic, NY is making the closest thing to Scotch outside of Scotland, thanks to their secret weapon, the acclaimed master distiller Shane Fraser from Aberdeen. Tenmile's focus is on American Single Malt Whisky, a relatively un...

"Sool is an ancient style of rice wine. It has over two-thousand years of documented history. Our style is distinctly influenced by the style of brews that I grew up with—a wilder, more natural, more gastronomical style of Korean wine. And for those who are curious about going deeper, there is always something more." – Alice Jun

Alice Jun remembers makgeolli as an important ingredient of her upbringing in the '90s in her Los Angeles Korean American community. Her father, a first-generation immigrant, taught her how to brew the mixed-culture sedimented rice wine at h...

“Wine has always been in change, in movement. The wine that we drink now is not the same wine that was drunk a hundred years ago, or a thousand years ago. For a revolution, you have to go back to the past to see what you have missed, and then bring it back.” – Ricardo Peñalba 

More than a winemaker, Ricardo Peñalba is a self-proclaimed "wine ideologist." When he's out walking the rows of his biodynamic vineyards in Ribera del Duero, he's thinking obsessively about wine and how it connects humans to our shared hi...

"If a wine is trying to copy somewhere else or be something else, it might taste good, but it needs to have an authenticity and a sense of place to it, and it must be balanced and beautiful to drink. If a wine can put those two concepts together, for me, it's a perfect wine." – Chris Mullineux 

For decades, South Africa’s Swartland region was dominated by industrial farming cooperatives that pumped out massive amounts of inexpensive bulk wine and diluted any hint of terroir. It wasn’t until the turn of the millennium that a...

"Everything that we do is very pure. We are mingled or entangled with other species, with the trees, with everything. That's one of the purposes of this tequila: not only producing tequila, but maintaining the harmony and equilibrium with the surroundings." – Daday Suárez

Daday Suárez is a completionist. When he was wrestling with questions of reality and being, he got a degree in philosophy. When he wanted to order wine at restaurants with more confidence, he became a certified sommelier. When he was looking for the perfect tequila, he used his degree in m...

“Normally you have a best friend, and sometimes you see each other on weekends, but we are in the same business. We feel lucky. You can’t find it a second time in the world.” – Bernhard Ott

If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together. History is full of contemporaries who share visions of success, who, instead of competing, mentor and encourage the other to become greater than one could alone. Warhol and Basquiat. Lewis and Tolkien. Gauguin and van Gogh. Today in the world of craft wi...

"I'm very proud to be Mexican. I love my people, I love my country, and we love what we are doing. We do our part with passion, with honesty, with everything that we can with our hands. We are people from the field. We are rancheros, and we feel proud of this. It's our task." – Sergio Vivanco

For five generations, the Vivanco family has been growing agave in Arandas, in the Jalisco highland plateau, though they didn't establish their own destilería until 1994. Registered as NOM 1414, they soon launched their own family label, Viva Méx...

“This is one reason why family wineries are so important. My father is 82, and he’s supporting, in all the ways, the planting of vineyards that he will not see the full potential of. This multi-generational commitment to viticulture, this multi-generational commitment to caring for the land—that’s why families are so important.” – Jasmine Hirsch

The Hirsch family are farmers, though it took decades for David Hirsch to realize after planting his first vines in 1980 that he's not farming grapes—he's farming soil. This epiphany came after a long evolutionary arc in an exceptionally...

“They didn’t believe that I could do the work. And today, the girls are proving how sometimes the impossible can become normal.” – Chiara Boschis

As recently as the 1990s, Barolo and the surrounding villages were not ready for a woman to be in charge. When Chiara Boschis championed innovations like new oak barrels, organic farming, and green harvesting in a region that was firmly set in its traditional ways, her neighbors suggested to her father that she should be committed to a psych ward.

She laughs about it now because she proved them all...

"We're aiming for a mineral-driven, sharper, cooler style. Very fine, very precise, more focus, more finesse, more character." – Lara Haag

The Schloss Lieser estate boasts one of the most privileged vineyard portfolios of the Middle Mosel, with famed sites like Piesporter Goldtröpfchen, Brauneberger Juffer, Wehlener Sonnenuhr, and Bernkasteler Doctor creating incredibly sharp and precise wines from impossibly steep slopes.

In this episode, German wine expert Michael Lykens tastes a flight of Rieslings with Lara Haag, winemaker Thomas Haag's daughter. They discuss how respect for terroir directs their low-intervention winemaking practices and whe...

"You know, trends come and go, but I think there always is an evolution. I think the way I try to approach wine and food and anything else in life, even fashion, is to like what you like and trust your gut." – Martha Stoumen

Martha Stoumen is a first generation winemaker from California known for her fresh and youthful wines of primarily Italian varieties. After apprenticing with Giusto Occhipinti in Sicily, Martha returned to California on a mission to discover multigenerational organic vineyards to source her low-intervention wines.

Though she walks to th...

"For me, it’s very important to know where your roots are when you’re making wine. And I know exactly which kind of wine I want to make: it’s wine that most expresses where it comes from." – Cyprien Arlaud

The third generation of his family estate in Morey St. Denis, Cyprien Arlaud of Domaine Arlaud is regarded by many as one of the most respected farmers and winemakers in Burgundy today. His full-scale commitment to organic, biodynamics, and holistic soil management established him as a leader of a new era of low-intervention practices.

Speaking...

“To work by animal traction, 40% grade vineyards, on slate, at 1,000m of altitude, that are 45 minutes from anything else—all the best producers are going more and more into geographically specific bottlings.” – Max Working

In December, we sent our Iberian wine specialists to take the pulse of what’s new and exciting in Portugal and Galicia. Matt Wolfe and Max Working tasted the wines of nine producers from Bierzo to Porto and returned with a wealth of stories, wineries to watch, and two souvenir tastevins from their surprise induction into a secret society. They reveal how some producers...

“What I’m looking for is very personal. It’s like a sound in the wine. And that sound is defined by something I love. Like a musician, I was always looking for my personal sound, and that sound comes easy with País.” – Pedro Parra 

Pedro Parra is a world-renowned winemaker, saxophone player, and vineyard consultant from Chile—and one of the few individuals with a PhD from the Paris Center of Agriculture with a specialization in terroir. Under his eponymous brand, Pedro Parra y Familia Wines, Pedro is a leading member of the "New Chile" wine movement...

"Reducing the barriers to getting into Scotch, I think, is really important for bringing new consumers from all walks of life in and making them feel welcome. The whole point of Nc'nean is whisky for everybody." – Annabel Thomas

Annabel Thomas is the founder of the most sustainable distillery in the world, Nc’nean. Nestled in the Western Highlands of Scotland, Nc’nean is completely off the grid. The entire operation produces net-zero carbon emissions and is powered by 100% renewable energy. They use only organic barley, and the bottles are made from 100% recycled glass.

In a conver...