Anthony Terlato cultivated customers and wine critics by hosting them at lunches that could last until evening and featured dozens of wines carefully paired with food.
Photo: Terlato FamilyAnthony Terlato, a Chicago-based wine importer, had a mission when he visited Italy in 1979: to track down an Italian white wine that, unlike Soave or Orvieto, could command a premium price.
In Milan, he asked a maître d’hôtel for “an absolutely spectacular white wine.” He was served a Pinot Grigio, a wine then almost unknown in the U.S. For Mr. Terlato, it was “love at first taste,” according to his 2008 memoir, “Taste: A Life in Wine.”
Conducting further research at another restaurant, he astonished a waiter by ordering all 18 Pinot Grigios listed on the menu. After tasting each of them, he concluded that Santa Margherita, made with grapes from the Alto Adige region of northern Italy, was the best. All that remained was to visit the winery and negotiate a long-term contract to import and market the wine in the U.S.
Advertised on “The Tonight Show” and promoted heavily coast-to-coast, it became a blockbuster, eventually selling more than 600,000 cases a year, and established Pinot Grigio as one of the most popular wines in the U.S.
Mr. Terlato, who died June 29 at the age of 86, evolved from one of the nation’s leading marketers of fine wine into a producer as well. In the mid-1990s, he began acquiring and operating wineries, first in California and later in Italy.
When he got his start in the wine industry, in 1955, a bottle of Château Lafite could be bought for less than $4, but Americans typically preferred coffee or tea with their meals.
Still, Mr. Terlato sensed potential. Working at his father’s Leading Liquor Marts store in Chicago, he gravitated toward the wine aisle and began offering tastings. He read wine books, learned the lingo and, during his honeymoon in California, met Robert Mondavi.
His hunch that millions of Americans could be persuaded to take wine seriously was the beginning of a business that became the Chicago-based Terlato Wine Group, now headed by his sons, Bill and John Terlato.
Mr. Terlato cultivated customers and wine critics by hosting them at lunches that could last until evening and featured dozens of wines carefully paired with food. Ruth Ellen Church, a wine columnist for the Chicago Tribune, wrote in 1973 that Mr. Terlato, “a handsome knight,” arrived in a red Ferrari to whisk her to a lunch at which 15 “great growths of Bordeaux” were served.
Anthony John “Tony” Terlato, an only child, was born May 11, 1934, and grew up in Brooklyn. His father, Salvatore Terlato, born in Italy, sold insurance and real estate. His parents kept a jug of wine cooling in the hallway and had a glass with dinner. Young Tony sometimes got a small dose mixed with water.
As a boy, he delivered newspapers and groceries. After high school, he attended St. Francis College in Brooklyn to study business but dropped out during his second year and found work at a savings bank. Soon, he decided that “working at a bank was not for me, unless I owned it,” as he wrote in his memoir.
After moving to Miami Beach, he worked as a bellboy and later as a doorman and swimming teacher at the Fontainebleau Hotel. Generous tippers, he discovered, “walk, talk and look a certain way.” He concentrated his attention on them.
Anthony Terlato, right, and his father, Salvatore, at their new Chicago store, Leading Liquor Marts, in 1955.
Photo: Terlato FamilyPartly to lure the young man back into the family fold, his father moved to Chicago and opened Leading Liquor Marts. Tony Terlato agreed to help his father get started and soon discovered an interest in fine wine. He met Josephine “JoJo” Paterno, a daughter of Anthony Paterno, a family friend. They married in 1956.
Mr. Terlato joined Mr. Paterno’s company, a bottler of cheap wine that arrived at the plant in railroad tank cars. Mr. Terlato’s job was to sell that wine to liquor stores and restaurants. Many restaurant owners, he found, had only one question: How much does it cost per ounce?
Betting that locally bottled jug wines would lose their appeal as Americans learned more about wine, he visited New York and sought out importers of higher-quality products. He began distributing Portuguese rosé, a surprise hit and early sign that Americans were becoming more adventurous in choosing wine.
As he searched for distinctive wines to distribute, Mr. Terlato squabbled with his father-in-law, who preferred focusing on lower-priced wines. “I threatened to leave often, and one time I actually did—for two months,” he wrote. In the end, he prevailed and was promoted to president of the company in 1963 at age 29.
Mr. Terlato found some restaurants were reluctant to change their wine offerings because it meant reprinting menus. He bought a small printing press and began offering free wine-list reprints.
Eager to entertain customers in a more personal style, he learned to cook. Lunch guests at the company’s private dining room included Philippine de Rothschild, Lee Iacocca and Julia Child. The company moved its headquarters to a castle-like mansion in Lake Bluff, Ill., to provide an Old World setting for its marathon feasts.
On one of his frequent trips to Europe, he met Michel Chapoutier, a young winemaker from the Rhône wine region of France. Mr. Terlato began importing Mr. Chapoutier’s wines and later invested with him in a winery in the Australian Pyrenees.
Mr. Terlato is survived by his wife, two sons, six grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
He owned homes in Chicago, at Lake Geneva in Wisconsin, near St. Helena in California’s Napa Valley and in Indian Wells, Calif., where he cultivated another obsession, golf. He recalled spending hours watching Ben Hogan videos to study “where his hands, hip, kneecap, foot, head and shoulder are as he strokes the ball.”
Mr. Terlato shunned wines sold mainly on affordability. “We never lower the price,” he told the San Francisco Chronicle in 2005. “Instead, we make the quality better and let the other brands chase us.”
Write to James R. Hagerty at bob.hagerty@wsj.com
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