BIO
Todd Alexander, a native of Atlanta, Georgia, was called to the world of food and wine at a very young age. While on his first trip to Europe, five year-old Todd was frequently seen atop the shoulders of chefs being returned to the dining room after having ventured-off to “inspect” the kitchen. Noting over the years that this love of food was not a fluke, Todd’s parents gave him an auction prize to attend Nathalie Dupree’s cooking school followed by another course in Chinese cuisine. During the summer of his 10th grade year, Todd traveled to Italy on The Experiment in International Living program, where he lived with the family with whom he remains very close. This particular trip solidified Todd’s passion for Italian food and was the inspiration for attending Cornell University’s School of Hotel Administration.
In 1987 Todd spent a semester at an Italian language school in Florence, where armed with his notepads and nitrogen wine-saver, he spent most of his days after class in the cellar of Enoteca Alessi one of Florence’s finest wine shops; picking the brain of the cellar master and tasting on a daily basis. It was during those 5 months that Todd knew he would spend his professional career in the wine industry.
After graduating from Cornell in 1990, Todd went to work at Winebow, Inc., an Italian wine importer in New Jersey where he assisted Leonardo LoCascio with everything from generating tracking reports to developing point-of-sale material. In 1992, Todd was hired by Sherry-Lehmann Wines and Spirits in New York, where he worked the phones and floor and soon became the store’s Italian wine go-to. At Sherry he was exposed to a broader spectrum of wines while gaining valuable insight into the buying habits and patterns of the end consumer.
After a year of growing bunions at Sherry Lehmann, Todd knew it was time to see firsthand how wine was “grown” and to observe what distinguished the great winemakers from the good ones. So once again he packed his bags and set out to Italy with the intention of writing the definitive book on Italian wine. He started in Puglia spending the 1992 harvest with the great Taurino family of Salice Salentino fame and drove his little maroon Fiat Uno from Puglia to Piedmont, tasting thousands of wines, walking miles of vineyards, and sharing countless meals and hours of conversations with Italy’s top wine growers. As a result of the trip he met several wine growers interested in exporting their wine to the U.S. and after returning to Atlanta, Todd founded Vendemmia in 1994, a wine wholesale company that distributed wines such as Avignonesi, Feudi di San Gregorio, Luciano Sandrone, dal Forno Romano, Castello di Ama, Giovanni Conterno, Alois Lageder, and dozens more of the top wineries in Italy.
After 12 years in the import/wholesale trade, Todd switched gears and moved to California to pursue his dream and founded the Italian Wine Report, a culmination of a lifelong passion. Todd’s unwavering appreciation for Italian wine, food, and life has taken him down every major highway and many a gravel road through every region in Italy. He has been recognized by the national media, including Fortune, CNN, USA Today, and several other books and publications for his vast and useable knowledge of Italian wines.
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