Importer Terry Theise tries a mellower tack, sort of Jon Bonné, Chronicle Wine Editor Friday, October 17, 2008 Importer Terry Theise, in San Francisco recently for a pa... Terry Theise raises a glass of Riesling after a panel dis... It was a subtle change - subtle enough that you had to be one of Terry Theise's regular readers to notice. The ebullient importer of some of the best Rieslings and Champagnes has never been at a loss for words. Since 1985, his occasionally verbose love for his own portfolio has sold a generation on the food-friendliness of German and Austrian Riesling, and later on the virtues of lesser-known Champagne. So the shift in tone in Theise's 2007 Champagne catalog was quickly perceived by those who know him best - starting with his wife, Odessa Piper, the longtime chef of L'Etoile restaurant in Madison, Wis. "She gets to the Champagne catalog," Theise recalled, "and says, 'Why are you so angry?' " For a wine importer - or stemware-toting evangelist, really, since his wines are imported by Syosset, N.Y.-based Michael Skurnik Wines - Theise's tone was downright strident. He had named names (Moet, Veuve Clicquot). He described major Champagne houses' discussions of the "blender's art" as "a putrid raft of s-." He railed against how such big brands, in his view confect tales about handmade quality to tout what is often a mass-produced product. An example: "You could argue that Champagne is the finest industrial wine on earth and I might well agree, but never forget that Big-Brand Champagne is indeed industrial, with all that implies. Perhaps you could then avoid the queasy spectacle of them affecting the patois of the truly artisanal while actually conducting business just like Microsoft, except for the creativity." Not exactly Patrick Henry. But in the context of a sales catalog, even one of Theise's, it was a rallying cry. He now calls it his moment of "sporadically righteousness indignation." And yes, he's much better now, thanks. But it's no surprise that his fire would be lit after more than a decade seeking out Champagne made by small family producers - the very opposite of what Champagne's largest names stand for. "I don't think there's anything morally dubious about industrial products," Theise suggested during a recent visit to San Francisco, "but I think there's something dubious about speaking the parlance of the artisan while making industrial products." There's not exactly a revolution at the gates. The "grower" market - Champagnes produced by recoltant-manipulants (growers who make their own wine) - accounts for just under 3 percent of the total market, according to the CIVC. But interest in grower Champagnes has been steadily increasing, thanks in large part to Theise's sometimes breathless prose. ("I will be drinking lots of this," he wrote of the slightly sweet Jean Milan Cuvee Tendresse Champagne, "and I have more testosterone than the entire World Wrestling Federation, so there.") What Champagne shortage? Why the outburst? As he tells it, the linchpin was the Champagne shortage - or, he insists, the alleged shortage - prior to the millennium that prompted a buying frenzy. As one import executive told The Chronicle in 1999, "I would be surprised if there was not a shortage before the end of the year." Yet Theise says he witnessed tons of unsold Champagne sitting in warehouses. "At that point, I wondered why am I bending over backwards to be civil to these people? I felt it was a moral obligation of mine." But indignance has its limits, especially for someone as successful as Theise. Though several importers helped ignite the U.S. market for German Riesling, Theise's name is linked to some of the most popular labels, including Willi Schaefer and Josef Leitz. His efforts to resurrect interest in Austrian wines after the 1985 scandal involving bottles tainted with diethylene glycol effectively created the current U.S. market. And though it's now unconscionable for a card-carrying wine geek not to have a preferred grower Champagne, few heard of the concept until Theise began writing his annual catalogs and preaching his gospel with an ebullience - and a Benny Hill-worthy impishness that quickly won him many fans among the ranks of influential wine buyers: "(I)f this isn't its best then Dolly Parton doesn't sleep on her back." Now Theise finds himself in a rather different position from his early years as wild-eyed proselytizer. He has become one of the most high-profile importers of small-production wine in the United States. So perhaps a touch of stateliness was in order. "The descriptions were wonderful to read. They were fanciful and they were useless," says Mark Ellenbogen, wine buyer for the Slanted Door and one of Theise's best longtime customers. "I think that there was this sort of alter ego almost in the writing. He's gotten older and I think he's calmed down a little bit." After more than two decades, and having released the Champagne flute from his gantlet, Theise seems to be growing increasingly philosophical. He is tired of convincing Americans of the virtues of his sweet German Rieslings ("It's tedious"). He is tired of trying to defend the notion of terroir - that wine is defined by its place of origin. Now he wants to take his terroir alert to the next level, not simply to prove its existence but to explore what that really means. What does this have to do with selling wine? For one, Theise's evangelism is an effective sales pitch. "Terry has a very healthy dose of self-belief which some people find cocky or even arrogant. But he's got the conviction of his beliefs," says Hiram Simon of WineWise in Oakland, who distributes Theise's wines in the Bay Area. "He'd like not only that everybody should embrace his way of thinking, but having embraced his way of thinking they should buy his wines." Theise not only wants to advance the concept, he wants to tackle the ways others distort and belittle it, and perhaps to raise the level of debate. "The path to wisdom doesn't begin by rebuking people," he suggested. Time to embrace terroir For Americans, Theise believes, the fear of terroir is the fear of having to give up thinking about varietals and styles and embrace the subtleties of geography. For winemakers, it's the fear, as he puts it, "that they don't have the right one." Instead, he would have us find faith in the land and accept, as he puts it, "that the vineyard's existence is as existentially real as yours." A vintner's role is merely to be the vehicle for the vineyard's expression. "That respect, cooperation and companionability toward nature," Theise continued, "is frankly, I think it's one of those elements of saintliness that human being are capable of from time to time." California cliche On the other side of this debate, as he sees it: New World vintners who speak about vineyard distinction and yet treat grapes simply as base material to be molded in the winery with extraction and oak. "That's kind of the cliche of California," he says. In all, it's a mixed message - a dose of invective, a dab of contemplation. So it comes as no surprise that Theise plans to following in the steps of fellow importers like Kermit Lynch and Neal Rosenthal and write a book, though no publication date is set. It will be, he says, part "charter of values" and part rhapsody on his "preparedness for beauty" in wine. Meantime, his latest catalogs have acquired a seemingly contemplative bent. In his 2008 German book, he writes of "wines that express without asserting, wines that show the little penumbra between joy and serenity, between brilliance and luminousness." It's not too much to claim that a wistful tone has crept in, for the most part. There's still drama - in this year's catalog, wines from Verzenay were "rural, animal Champagnes with funky iris smells and the weirdest (and coolest) apple-hoppy-meady terroir-thang and yet the wines have SCHWING and are actually even refined." Which isn't a bad way to sum up the maturity of sorts that Theise seems to have arrived at. "Really great wine always makes me feel tender and not only that, but also a little bit sad," Theise said. "It's a remorse that if I'm able to be this way now, why haven't I been able to be this way before?" E-mail Jon Bonné at jbonne(a)sfchronicle.com. http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/10/17/WIRE13G81E.DTL This article appeared on page F - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle -- ------------------------------ * Dr. James Ellingson, jellings(a)me.umn.edu * * University of Minnesota, mobile : 651/645-0753 * * Great Lakes Brewing News, 1569 Laurel Ave., St. Paul, MN 55104 *