About Charles Neal
Charles Neal
Charles Neal is an importer and distributor of wines and spirits based in San Francisco, California. His company, Charles Neal Selections, has been in existence since 1998. He is a leading authority on Armagnac and Calvados, having written benchmark books on both brandies, and increasingly so on Cognac as well. In addition to these spirits, Charles imports wonderful wines from nearly every French wine region, including numerous wines from Southwestern France, Bordeaux, the Loire Valley, Burgundy, Champagne, Jura, Beaujolais, Burgundy, the Northern Rhone, Southern Rhone, Bugey, Savoie and, most recently, the Lorraine and Corsica.
Spending a lot of time on airplanes, Charles travels to France five or six times a year and distributes wines and spirits in 17 states. While intimate with just about every wine making region in the country, he doesn’t know much about Paris as he’s normally too busy getting to his first appointments a few hours after arriving at CDG and talking too long at his last appointment before making his way back to the capital the night before leaving. For the past eighteen years he has navigated the back roads of France, tirelessly attempting to find wine growers from areas often neglected by other importers. His philosophy remains rather simple: find high quality wines from small growers that display the grape variety from which they come and the terroir upon which they are grown while getting them to a customer at a fair price.
In pursuit of this philosophy, Charles has sought out and brought attention to wines from relatively unknown appellations like Madiran, Jurançon, Gaillac, Fronton, Marcillac and Béarn, as well as the unheralded Alpine crus of Chignin, Arbin, Apremont, Ripaille and Marestel. He has also cultivated a small but highly regarded grower champagne portfolio, becoming one of the greatest supporters of these small growers in their effort to challenge the old behemoth Champagne houses.
Spending a lot of time on airplanes, Charles travels to France five or six times a year and distributes wines and spirits in 17 states. While intimate with just about every wine making region in the country, he doesn’t know much about Paris as he’s normally too busy getting to his first appointments a few hours after arriving at CDG and talking too long at his last appointment before making his way back to the capital the night before leaving. For the past eighteen years he has navigated the back roads of France, tirelessly attempting to find wine growers from areas often neglected by other importers. His philosophy remains rather simple: find high quality wines from small growers that display the grape variety from which they come and the terroir upon which they are grown while getting them to a customer at a fair price.
In pursuit of this philosophy, Charles has sought out and brought attention to wines from relatively unknown appellations like Madiran, Jurançon, Gaillac, Fronton, Marcillac and Béarn, as well as the unheralded Alpine crus of Chignin, Arbin, Apremont, Ripaille and Marestel. He has also cultivated a small but highly regarded grower champagne portfolio, becoming one of the greatest supporters of these small growers in their effort to challenge the old behemoth Champagne houses.
Charles himself puts it best:
Obviously it’s easier to talk about a band, chef, writer or filmmaker when they easily fit into one specific category. “He writes noir fiction.” “They’re a metal band.” “She’s an Italian chef.” “He makes violent movies.” We like to do this with wine importers too: “They deal with German wines.” They sell natural wines.” “They have California boutique wines.” “Their focus is Italian wines.” Or, “All of their wines are organic.”
It’s great to be known for something, in that you’ve made some progress in enlightening people to a certain type of wine. But that doesn’t mean that that category is all that you do. It is difficult to generalize or pigeonhole much of what Charles Neal Selections does. We work with a great deal of producers from the Southwest but those producers comprise only about 15% of CNS sales. The company actually sells much more Champagne, Burgundy or Loire Valley wine than wine from the great Southwest. We ask that people not ignore areas like the Jura, Savoie or Bugey, but we thoroughly understand that there is a bigger market for producers from more well-known regions, so we choose them with the same care and patience as those from smaller, less-known regions.
We could say that most of our producers are small. But we are beginning to dislike the word small when talking about production because smaller production alone doesn’t always mean better production. Small production often means amateur production. But small is also a relative word; what is small anyway? 3 million cases as opposed to 10 million? 6,000 as opposed to 15,000? 1,200 as opposed to 5,000? The producers imported by Charles Neal Selections average 6,000 cases (that is 72,000 bottles) of wine per year. This normally means that the producers have somewhere between 10 and 20 hectares of vines with their winery nearby.
We work with family owned wineries throughout France. But this is another phrase that can easily be spun. Just who is family? Are they a dysfunctional bourgeois clan that hires an enologist and treats their employees with little respect? Are they a negoçiant firm owned by a family but who buys most of their grapes and are not involved with the winemaking? Or are they a family that actually gets their hands and shoes dirty in the vineyards and lives in a modest home on the property?
95% of the producers in the CNS Catalogue fall into this final category--humble producers carrying on a tradition from generations past and building a future for generations to come. We love spending time with our producers and eating and drinking with them in their homes. We love having discussions, getting in arguments, laughing and shooting the shit, often until midnight or after. It’s great to have visited or stayed at a domaine for more than a decade and watch a producer’s kids grow up around you. Many of them have seen our kids grow up too. One day they’re riding a bicycle, then a road bike, then a motorcycle.
We prefer to see wine producers at their domaines, rather than encountering them at wine trade fairs like Vin Expo, Vini Sud, the Loire Valley Wine Fair or Millisime Bio. While that is not a bad place to do one stop shopping and is par for the course for many importers and distributors, it’s just not our bag: those environs always seem so artificial, kind of like a wine shopping mall. We like seeing producers on their properties, so that we can get to know them over lunch, see how they work their vines, and observe the state of their cellars.
Most of our producers are well respected in their native regions, and are well-known, liked and respected by other growers in other appellations. We’re proud of the fact that these producers have continued to hone their craft, reintroducing techniques in their vineyards or upgrading equipment in their cellars to ultimately produce better wines.
That doesn’t mean that certain producers are not capable of putting out some crowd-pleasing wines in relatively large quantities; we like nothing more than to supply our distributors with wines that they can place by the glass or sell repeatedly to retailers. We now have a hard time keeping some of these in stock but are working hard to have a steady pipeline of core wines that nevertheless display the fruit of their grapes and minerality of their terroir.
We have never been reliant on the press to help sell our wines. Our wines do get reviewed frequently, but we have never thrown down press with distributors, stores or restaurants. We understand that this is the policy of many other importers, yet we’ve always felt that the people that buy our wine buy more based on their own palates and knowledge of their customers rather than on scores.
By law, Charles Neal Selections can only import and distribute wines and spirits to licensed wholesalers, retail stores and restaurants.
Obviously it’s easier to talk about a band, chef, writer or filmmaker when they easily fit into one specific category. “He writes noir fiction.” “They’re a metal band.” “She’s an Italian chef.” “He makes violent movies.” We like to do this with wine importers too: “They deal with German wines.” They sell natural wines.” “They have California boutique wines.” “Their focus is Italian wines.” Or, “All of their wines are organic.”
It’s great to be known for something, in that you’ve made some progress in enlightening people to a certain type of wine. But that doesn’t mean that that category is all that you do. It is difficult to generalize or pigeonhole much of what Charles Neal Selections does. We work with a great deal of producers from the Southwest but those producers comprise only about 15% of CNS sales. The company actually sells much more Champagne, Burgundy or Loire Valley wine than wine from the great Southwest. We ask that people not ignore areas like the Jura, Savoie or Bugey, but we thoroughly understand that there is a bigger market for producers from more well-known regions, so we choose them with the same care and patience as those from smaller, less-known regions.
We could say that most of our producers are small. But we are beginning to dislike the word small when talking about production because smaller production alone doesn’t always mean better production. Small production often means amateur production. But small is also a relative word; what is small anyway? 3 million cases as opposed to 10 million? 6,000 as opposed to 15,000? 1,200 as opposed to 5,000? The producers imported by Charles Neal Selections average 6,000 cases (that is 72,000 bottles) of wine per year. This normally means that the producers have somewhere between 10 and 20 hectares of vines with their winery nearby.
We work with family owned wineries throughout France. But this is another phrase that can easily be spun. Just who is family? Are they a dysfunctional bourgeois clan that hires an enologist and treats their employees with little respect? Are they a negoçiant firm owned by a family but who buys most of their grapes and are not involved with the winemaking? Or are they a family that actually gets their hands and shoes dirty in the vineyards and lives in a modest home on the property?
95% of the producers in the CNS Catalogue fall into this final category--humble producers carrying on a tradition from generations past and building a future for generations to come. We love spending time with our producers and eating and drinking with them in their homes. We love having discussions, getting in arguments, laughing and shooting the shit, often until midnight or after. It’s great to have visited or stayed at a domaine for more than a decade and watch a producer’s kids grow up around you. Many of them have seen our kids grow up too. One day they’re riding a bicycle, then a road bike, then a motorcycle.
We prefer to see wine producers at their domaines, rather than encountering them at wine trade fairs like Vin Expo, Vini Sud, the Loire Valley Wine Fair or Millisime Bio. While that is not a bad place to do one stop shopping and is par for the course for many importers and distributors, it’s just not our bag: those environs always seem so artificial, kind of like a wine shopping mall. We like seeing producers on their properties, so that we can get to know them over lunch, see how they work their vines, and observe the state of their cellars.
Most of our producers are well respected in their native regions, and are well-known, liked and respected by other growers in other appellations. We’re proud of the fact that these producers have continued to hone their craft, reintroducing techniques in their vineyards or upgrading equipment in their cellars to ultimately produce better wines.
That doesn’t mean that certain producers are not capable of putting out some crowd-pleasing wines in relatively large quantities; we like nothing more than to supply our distributors with wines that they can place by the glass or sell repeatedly to retailers. We now have a hard time keeping some of these in stock but are working hard to have a steady pipeline of core wines that nevertheless display the fruit of their grapes and minerality of their terroir.
We have never been reliant on the press to help sell our wines. Our wines do get reviewed frequently, but we have never thrown down press with distributors, stores or restaurants. We understand that this is the policy of many other importers, yet we’ve always felt that the people that buy our wine buy more based on their own palates and knowledge of their customers rather than on scores.
By law, Charles Neal Selections can only import and distribute wines and spirits to licensed wholesalers, retail stores and restaurants.