Rosenthal Wine Merchant

Rosenthal Wine Merchant is composed of a close-knit group of people who understand that wine is an agricultural product and that in its best and purest form wine must reflect a specific sense of place. They share the goal of communicating this concept to a growing audience by presenting the finest examples of wine made in the classical European tradition.

Rosenthal Wine Merchant started in 1977 as a humble, one-man retail operation located in New York City but very much outside the mainstream of the wine business. Neal Rosenthal, having stepped away from his corporate and international law practice, was joined shortly thereafter by his partner Kerry Madigan, and the two expanded their fledgling company from its retail base to become an importer and distributor of fine wines and specialty food products.

The objective from the outset was to work as directly as possible with growers who were dedicated to producing limited quantities of the finest quality wines and who shared the RWM passion for terroir—that ephemeral “sense of place.” Since their initial forays into California, France, and Italy in 1979-1980, the RWM portfolio has grown to include over 150 different suppliers. These growers hail from almost every viticultural area of France and Italy, as well as the mountainous Valais and Vaud districts of Switzerland, Spanish Catalonia, and four of Austria’s major winegrowing regions.