Interview, Part 2: Wilson Daniels President Rocco Lombardo

In the second part of our interview, Wilson Daniels president Rocco Lombardo discusses potential portfolio additions, the wholesale business, and the outlook for fine wine heading into 2025.

SND: How is business across your five wholesale markets (New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Washington, and Oregon)?

Lombardo: There’s still destocking pressure, and we manage our direct wholesale businesses pretty tightly. We’re not in any inventory challenges. The growth that we’re experiencing today is with our national portfolio. In our wholesale businesses in the New York tri-state area, we’re flat year over year in terms of revenue. There have been some brand sales that have impacted our business negatively. We were the distributor in New York state for Rombauer, which sold to Gallo. Frank Family being sold to Treasury also impacted our business. We did pick up Shafer on both coasts, which we’re excited about.

The businesses remain strong. We recently invested to increase sales staff in the marketplace on the East Coast by 15%. That is starting to pay dividends, because September and October have been very positive for us on the East Coast. But destocking is still an ongoing force in the market, both at the distributor level and at the trade level.

SND: Where are you seeing the market pressure on wine coming from?

Lombardo: Keep in mind that in the luxury category, for wines with pedigree, like Domaine de la Romanée-Conti and Biondi-Santi, that demand is there. It’s the wines in between that are under more pressure. There’s a contraction in consumption coming from two different aspects. One is the inflationary pressure that put constraints on discretionary spending—real wages need to increase. Another is a change in consumption patterns. There is no doubt that RTDs are pulling consumers away who were previously drinking rosé and other wines in that affordable category as wines of pleasure.

SND: How are you preparing for potential tariffs on imported wines?

Lombardo: I’ve been on the phone nonstop trying to sketch out a plan to deal with tariffs, and that’s still ongoing. It seemed pretty definitive that there’ll be a broad-based tariff forthcoming as part of the policies disclosed by the Trump administration while they were running. And then there are tariffs that were part of the Boeing-Airbus dispute. They’ve been paused, and that pause expires in 2026. We’ll be preparing for all scenarios.

SND: Does that make you more likely to increase your presence in domestic wines?

Lombardo: We remain very bullish on expanding our domestic portfolio. Our desire is to strengthen our positioning with a Napa Valley brand focused on estate Cabernet vineyards. It continues to be an area that we’re pursuing, but it needs to be the right fit.

In addition to this interview, Rocco Lombardo also spoke with Wine Spectator on the state of the industry in the latest edition of the Straight Talk podcast.

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