"When Sansi, Mike Stolese’s 3-foot-high, spirited, 2-year-old Great Dane, greets visitors at the entrance to The Vermont Wine Merchants property on South Champlain Street in Burlington, it’s a sign Stolese is nearby. Named for Stolese’s favorite Italian vineyard, Sansi often wanders through the 6,700 square feet of warehouse and office space, trying to tempt one of the 20 employees to play tug-of-war. If not wandering, she can usually be found at rest beneath the antiqued plank table in the wholesaler’s tasting room.

Sansi’s life is indicative of the way business is run at Vermont Wine Merchants: Everybody plays and works hard and is passionately dedicated to providing good wine to restaurants, resorts and independent retailers around Vermont. “If you can’t have fun in the wine business, there’s something wrong with you,” says Stolese.

Stolese and his partner, Joerg Klauck, met 14 years ago, working for Hungarian Cellars, a small wine importer in Burlington, where they helped set up a distribution business. Realizing the relationship wasn’t working, they quit, and soon after used the contacts they had made to set themselves up in their own wholesale wine business....

On the Waterfront

Side Dishes: New fest to pick up where Chew Chew left off
By Suzanne Podhaizer [04.21.10]
The Green Mountain Chew Chew Festival [1]expired in 2009 after 24 years. But a new event called the Burlington Wine & Food Festival [2] will give waterfront walkers plenty to chow down on in 2010.
The brainchild of Vermont Wine Merchants’ [3] Mike Stolese, who partnered with Chew Chew’s Rick Norcross, the one-day gig will highlight a wide variety of vino, live music and food from eight area restaurants. So far, L’Amante [4], Miguel’s on Main [5], The Belted Cow Bistro [6], Trattoria Delia [7] and Souza's [8] have signed on.
The eating and sipping will happen in two four-hour sessions on Saturday, June 26. For $40 a head, guests get a wine glass and 15 swigs, a voucher for one food item from a restaurant and unlimited artisan bread and Vermont cheese.
Expect a celebrity guest: Olympic figure-skating gold medalist Peggy Fleming, who’ll be representing the California vineyard she owns with her husband, Greg Jenkins. “They’re awfully nice people,” says Norcross. “Their son works at Burton [9]; that’s the Burlington connection.”
Sounding bemused, Norcross notes how far Burlington has come, taste-wise, since the first Chew Chew Fest 25 years ago. “When I started that festival, Carbur’s was the hot place in Burlington,” he recalls. “There’s a little different bent to this [event].”