The Somm Journal

110 { THE SOMM JOURNAL } DECEMBER/JANUARY 2018/2019 Ensconced in the Lincoln Heights neighborhood on the city's east side, Mad- dalena and the San Antonio Winery serve as an oasis among the steel and concrete of nearby downtown L.A. The restaurant proudly displays symbols of the company's history, including varnished redwood tanks, brick pillars, and sepia-toned pictures of the extended family tree. The business' origins extend back more than a century to 1917, when members of the family immigrated from Italy to join other worldly pilgrims in this small urban hamlet. "You have this big wave of Western Europeans who settled right here," says Anthony's uncle Steve Riboli, who serves as Vice President of Riboli Family Wines. "This became their blue-collar community. There were multiple breweries here [and] multiple wineries." Described as little more than a glorified garage at its inception, the San Antonio Winery was situated on Lamar Street amongst cheesemongers, tailors, and brewers. As the merchants' shops gradu - ally shuttered over the years, however, the winery endured; now the oldest business of its kind in Los Angeles, it's drawing renewed attention as more residents and businesses move into the area. "Urban breweries and urban distilleries have all popped up," Anthony says. "In downtown L.A. we're as urban as you could get, and that used to be a negative for many years. However, that has changed." The Importance of Input Far from the corner table at the Mad- dalena restaurant and the surrounding Southland traffic, Anthony spends much of his time during harvest season tending to the family's estate vineyards in Paso Robles, Monterey, and Napa Valley. The company's success has enabled a functional expansion, and the winemaker is eager to leverage a new national spotlight to show - case the entire Riboli Family Wines portfo- lio, including its San Simeon, Opaque, and Maddalena labels. "We are a producer, we own estate vineyards, and we have a brand-new state- of-the-art winery in Paso Robles," Anthony notes. "We're covering everything from producer to importer to distributor to na - tional sales to restaurant. It's pretty much all aspects of the wine business." Both Anthony and Steve attribute the company's longevity to its intimacy with its audience's preferences. Anthony's grand - father, Stefano Riboli, labored for more than 40 years in the tasting room—built in 1946, it's one of the original tasting rooms in California—at San Antonio Winery, where guests' insights and feedback have provided a guiding light for Riboli Family Wines. "Direct-to-consumer retail is now very popular, but that was part of who we've always been," Anthony says. "I don't care if you're spending millions of dollars on a marketing campaign—that's what a lot of large companies want to do, to just create these marketing and consumer groups. But when you [talk to] consumers in your tasting room, that's real input." Steve recounts a simpler time during the company's genesis, when consumers' tastes were, well, a little less selective. "There were two types of wines: red and redder," he quips. "That's what this community drank: red blends." As tastes evolved, so did the business, yet despite the expansion of their operation, the Ribolis pride themselves on maintaining a core of authenticity that distinguishes their wines from a sea of other beverage choices. "When consumers go down the shelves at their grocery store, they're like, 'This is kind of scary,'" Steve says. "It's the same story: How do I build a relationship with you? How do you trust me in this crazy business of hundreds of thousands of labels of wines?" Telling "Real" Stories Another key to the sustained popularity of the family's portfolio, Anthony says, is that each brand is treated as its own distinct entity. "Too often people are bottling the same wine with multiple labels and that's not what we've ever done. Each brand has a real story: We don't make things up, because we don't need to," he explains. Part of that legitimacy naturally stems from the efforts of the real-life faces behind these brands. Among them is family matriarch Maddalena Riboli, who's often regaled as the visionary whose influence and sage guidance laid the foundation of Riboli Family Wines for the majority of the 20th century. She continues to roam the expanse of her namesake restaurant, where her name is inscribed on the wall as well as on her eponymous bottlings of Paso Robles Cabernet Sauvignon, Mon - terey Chardonnay, and other wines. "The best advice my grandmother has ever given to all of our family is that you've got to evolve—and I think that's the se - cret," Anthony says. "Sometimes old things become popular again and trends come back, but at the same time, you've got to The Riboli Family of San Antonio Winery's newest facility in Paso Robles.

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