My father, Pat Armentano, was not only my Dad, he was also my best friend, my mentor, and as I took on the role of CEO of Paraco Gas which he’d started out of a tiny garage in Mount Vernon, New York, he was also my business partner.
My father loved to share – anything he had was instantly more valuable to him if he could share it.
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What I learned from him could fill several books – the first one is on the way this year – but one of the things he modeled for all of us that has brought me the greatest joy is his love of sharing.
My father loved to share – anything he had was instantly more valuable to him if he could share it. And close to the top of the list of things he loved to share was food and wine.
As a young man I didn’t care much for wine. Which is nearly sacrilege considering I’m Italian with the blood of all four regions of southern Italy running in my veins. Both of my parents were second generation Americans, born to immigrants from Sicily and Calabria on my father’s side and Puglia and Campania on my mother’s side. It was expected that I would love wine the way I loved my mother’s pasta and gravy on Sundays and seven kinds of fish for Christmas.
But me, I liked beer.
My father used to bust my balls about that. Because wine wasn’t just an Italian tradition, or a family tradition. It was a business tradition. Any important negotiation, when my father was running things, happened over wine. Dad believed you never let the lawyers do the negotiation for you. Business relationships were all about chemistry and connection. When you negotiated you met in person, with all the principals at the table, you ordered food and wine, and you talked until the deal either came together or fell apart. Wine was just as important to the ritual as the food or the sharpened pencils because sharing wine, to my father anyway, was how you treated your friends and he wanted to be friends with anyone he did business with.
I loved the tradition, but I still didn’t much like wine.
We sat, the two of us, hour after hour, talking of everything and nothing.
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Then I went out to California to see my grandmother who was about to turn 99. I let my daughter talk me into trip up to Napa. We took a tour and to my surprise I fell in love with Mondavi wines, with the history and romance of the estate, and I was converted.
Which led to a new era of my relationship with my father, and opened the door to not only some of the most important connections we’ve made for Paraco Gas, but also some of the deepest and most meaningful conversations I ever had with my dad.
After that California trip I was not only a wine convert—now that I had discovered a new love I was obsessed. On a trip to Italy with my father I was inspired by their private cellars so when I returned home I called my friend Pat Sullivan. Pat is an Irish guy who has been a wine connoisseur for as long as I’ve known him, nearly 20 years now. So back then, when I knew nothing, I called up Pat and said, “Pat look, I’m thinking about putting this wine cellar together and I need your help.”
I called in the carpenter who had worked on other rehab projects for me and I acted as the general contractor. We pieced it together from Home Depot and a wood kit from Washington State and a copper ceiling out of a magazine. And when it was finished it was stellar.
Technically it was mine. But in truth, it was a space I shared with my father.
We sat, the two of us, hour after hour, talking of everything and nothing. We discussed business, and golf—a game I swear hates me and which he loved but wasn’t good at. We talked about sports and books and crazy ideas. All those conversations are layered and fused together for me the way a Japanese sword is tempered and forged. They are a part of my inheritance from Pat Armentano as surely as my stubbornness or the company stock he bequeathed to me when he passed away.
I used to say about the wine cellar that it was a place where you go in “naked.” You had to go in as who you were.
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Deals were forged there too. Hours of negotiation surrounded by the bottles of wine and the chill air of the cellar. And always a handshake and a smile. Because in our business relationships ruled—contracts were only as good as the character of the people who signed them.
Sometimes we had events with over 200 people. Sometimes it was only four or five guys telling stories and drinking wine. We entertained competitors there, every CEO of every major competitor has been in that wine cellar at one time or another. It was the first stop for any meeting of any importance in the business.
You might think, from the amount of business discussed and created, that business was the real purpose behind the wine cellar. But in reality, it was simply built as a way to share something I loved. And when my father was there it was a place where we could share with each other and with every other person who came there. That’s why it was good for business, not the other way around.
Partly because of the vision I had when we built it, but largely because of my father’s way with people, the wine cellar was always about relationships. And transparency. I used to say about the wine cellar that it was a place where you go in “naked.” You had to go in as who you were. It didn’t matter if you were a governor or a gardener, you’d have the same conversation and be treated the same way. That was one of my father’s signature traits, all men being of equal value and deserving of equal treatment.
Of course sharing wine isn’t something that’s limited to a special place. I take bottles from my cellar to all kinds of events, and it’s a special thrill for me when I see someone’s eyebrows raise a bit and the corners of their mouth start to turn up in a smile because they’ve just had a taste of a new wine they really love. The wine instantly becomes 10 times more valuable to me because I shared it with someone else who enjoyed it.
I know some collectors that have their special bottles that they save for some occasion or another. But I always thought that waking up in the morning still breathing made the occasion special enough. So I’ve always opened up my wines just because I wanted to. And I’ve always poured them for other people, because a love of sharing is one of the gifts I inherited from my father, and wine is something I love to share.
My first wine cellar belongs to someone else now, that house was sold a couple of years ago. But I made sure the plans for my new home included a custom cellar and we had our inaugural party there earlier this year.
My father has been gone since 2010, but he’s very much with me every time I open a bottle of wine to share. In my mind I can see his smile, and hear his laugh, and know that we’ll always share more than blood—and the things we’ve shared with others will always be a part of what he and I share as father and son and best friends forever.
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Photo: Getty Images