I suppose I ought to start with an explanation for those of
you who have had the misfortune not to try Grignolino red wine. I was first
introduced to it during a trip to see a distributor in Milan, and on a return
trip some months later had left it to them to book a conveniently located hotel
. So what did they do? Well as our main contact, Stefano, lived in the hills
around the historic town of Como, they booked me into a wonderful hotel on the
lakeside. Grignolino is a wine from the Lombardy region of Italy which is
served young, generally after only a year or so in the bottle, and just as the
Italians seem to always get their food right, they get the wine to go with the
food right too!
I flew into Linate Airport on that first occasion, and
Stefano collected me in his tiny Fiat Cinquecento and drove me to his offices
on the outskirts of Milan, about a mile from the San Siro. There I had an
initial meeting with Stefano to discuss new products, pending orders, marketing
and sample stocks, and was then shown into a windowless room with orange fabric
walls to wait for the business owner who wanted to meet the new kind on the
block. I had been forewarned that it could be a long wait. An hour passed, then
two, then three, by which time I had run out of reports to tap into my laptop,
Italian newspapers to try and decipher with my limited knowledge of the
language, and their well-thumbed collection of interior design magazines, and
spent a further half hour twiddling my own thumbs waiting for the great man to
appear.
You always know an important Italian by the fact that they
don’t put their arms in their jacket sleeves, and when Mr. L. finally arrived
he was just so. He did not sit, but stood throughout this first encounter,
probably to give his fist greater impact when he thumped the table, and he
spoke only in Italian leaving Stefano to interpret and transmit the harsh words
that were about to pass between us. Poor Stefano. At one point he said to me ‘I cannot say that’
as I explained to Mr. L. that as his payment record was so appalling I would
not release any more goods at that time. I never did find out what Stefano said
by way of my reply! And Mr. L. demanded 120 day payment terms for his orders,
and demanded rafts of samples that I wasn’t prepared to give. And to be honest
after a near four hour wait, I was a bit hacked off and my tummy was rumbling.
Yet after our lively encounter we parted friends with Mr. L. uttering his first
words of English.
Anyway after that Stefano and I both needed a drink, and he
drove me the half hour back to my lakeside hotel for a five minute wash and
brush up before taking me to a restaurant a few miles around the lake. It was
dark by that time, and for an Italian Stefano was not a great driver, weaving
his way at high speed along roads that would only pass as back alleys in most
other locations. But we arrived in one piece and shared a fabulous meal and a
couple of bottles – yes bottles – of Grignolino before the white-knuckle ride
back to the hotel. Actually I think his driving was better on the way back!
The restaurant location was idyllic, and Stefano always a
perfect gentleman, was full of lively conversation, warmth and good humour.
Neither of us smoked. I had recently given up and he had a bronchial condition,
which presumably explains why the pair of us then shared a packet of twenty as
we stood on the balcony over the lake watching the fish circle around in the
calm waters below. I had done exactly the same at a different restaurant on my
first visit to Como, but it was a welcome feeling of déjà vu.
Months went by, and lo and behold payment performance
improved and the demands for rafts of samples eased. It was an ongoing battle
to keep Mr.L. within our agreed terms of payment and his credit insurance
limit, and I found that the secret to achieving that was regular communication
and occasional threats to not release stock, but eventually we settled on a
reasonable balance between the two. Every time I went to visit his offices in
Milan I was made to wait the customary few hours, Stefano became piggy in the
middle for a fraught half hour argument, and then the three of us – yes the
three of us and sometimes four and five – would be driven to Mr. L’s favourite
restaurant in an industrial part of Milan, a restaurant I doubt I would ever be
able to find under my own steam. There he was happy to converse entirely in
English and help Stefano and I with the Grignolino!
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