The Team
with a few clicks through these pages you’ll see our story: small family farms, natural wines, evocative flavors, memorable personalities and us, We are doing this because it is fun. We don’t have an outsized view of our role in the universe. We didn’t make these wines, and in spite of our fervent attachment to them we remain aware that our role is to provide a bridge for information (and a boat for wine) from small farms in Europe to you. Let us know how we can be useful, increase understanding and enjoyment. Your ideas make our lives better: a big part of the fun of being Piedmont Wine Imports is discussion with interested parties looking to buy and sell and enjoy cool wine. Keep in touch and thanks!
Jay Murrie (he/him)
I started Piedmont Wine Imports in 2012, to bring small farm organic European wines to America. After 13 fun-filled years in independent wine shops, I wanted to get out into the countryside, to find wine that would slightly increase the quality of what was available in America.
There are still finds! As years have passed we’ve traveled more miles than I maybe anticipated at the beginning of this dream job. Maybe I just don’t like a crowd. Leaving the trade shows and finding the one-lane gravel roads up to some isolated hillside farm, remote enough to hear nature surround you from the moment you turn off the car, this became my day at the office. It feels right. To meet grandparents and parents and pets, to see livestock and compost and tentative steps toward future plans, this approach brings us a better understanding of what we are selling to our customers. We become partners in the lives and dreams of the farmers we represent. As their spokespeople in America, this small slice of understanding makes it easier to do our real jobs, to be their advocate. It also builds friendships: we don’t work with jerks! Or generally speaking, middlemen. We prefer farmers, characters, funny, hardworking, inquisitive, real humans.
It’s all very personal at this stage. When it comes to the wines we import, it’s my goal to make zero compromises. Piedmont Wine Imports can skip mediocrity and collect wines we’d share with our friends and family, made by farmers who we’d invite to dinner.
I love how Piedmont Wine Imports changes. Every year our mission statement moves a little. It feels like glacial change. Scrutinizing, tasting, looking at the horizon and discerning where we best fit on the wine map: today we have a small team of smart wine professionals tinkering with what Piedmont Wine Imports is. It brings me optimism, also makes me feel a sense of urgency. I have to be sharper, more aware of our terrain to remain a relevant part of what we do. The people I work with give me freedom, they keep it from feeling like work.
Kate EliA (she/her)
It is hard to describe the feeling of someone coming back to a work partnership. My work life is farcically overpopulated with talented former colleagues. I gleaned the necessary skills and knowledge to make a living in wine by watching the professionals around me, attempting to mimic their good habits. Even among these overachievers, Kate stands out. The year we worked together as co-managers in a small retail shop was hugely instructional, and a little humbling.
Kate is a natural team leader. She is a wine professional, a barista who can also make the best chicken stock you’ve ever tasted, she is a secret bookkeeper (we won’t tell anyone!) who is way better at soccer than you are. I’m in awe of her, the all-roundedness of her ability is motivating. Nobody works harder. She is a true peer whose opinion on wine and the wine marketplace is invaluable to our growing business.
I’m going to describe Kate as a NC native. She can correct me.
Mandy Genovese (she/her)
Mandy is the administrative center of our universe, the hub for our communication, the coordinator and overseer of our warehouse activities, the meticulous eyes on all our invoices and outgoing vans and drivers. She’s also a food professional with years of customer service experience and a calm, even-keel demeanor that makes her presence on our team essential and delightful. She is from Wisconsin. She likes baking bread, hanging out with her chickens and going on walks in the wilderness of Orange County.
Anna Kasibhatla (she/her)
Anna is a supremely talented floral designer, baker of scones, writer, and goat whisperer. She also makes amazing flower crowns for dogs and cats. She has two very important quadripeds in her life: Sugar, her princess of a white kitty; and Elmo, her prince of a dog. She pretty much worships them both. She is an outspoken feminist and activist for racial equity and participated in a lot of Quaker Advocacy work in high school: Anna was a lifer at Carolina Friends School in Orange County. We are lucky to have such a talented, charismatic, funny, and energetic person working on the front lines of our wine distribution activities, and hope she will become even more deeply involved in our organic food universe in the years to come.
Willa imhoff (She/Her)
Willa’s introduction to wine came at a young age. She grew up in Sonoma County, stomping grapes and bottling Pinot Noir in the garage for the family’s tiny wine operation with her dad. But It took a move to the east coast to really draw Willa into the wine business. She studied food systems at the University of Vermont, with a focus on the impact of farming in California on migrant workers from Latin America. These workers create the thriving economy of her home region, but seldom are given an appropriate share of the wealth they create, in the form of wages, health care, or appropriate working and housing conditions. Willa left Vermont for a sustainable cooking internship in Rome, to work on an organic flower and vegetable farm in Northern California, and eventually to be an events manager at a restaurant in North Carolina.
Willa has seen many facets of our food system. Unsurprisingly, she is able to strengthen many parts of Piedmont Wine Imports. Willa is our new project supervisor, committing long hours to researching the future directions of PWI. She’s a sales rep, soaking up information about far-flung European farms, and sharing it with N.C. wine buyers. And she’s a critical piece of our operations and administrative infrastructure. She loads vans, creates spreadsheets, updates web pages. Willa likes to stay busy! And she’s too talented to keep in one spot.
In her free time, she is usually either fastidiously working on a craft, or spending time with her partner Emma and their dog Rudi.
Vivien Zec (she/her)
Vivien’s greetings are a happy preface to encountering our wares. Her off-kilter humor, positive attitude, and deep engagement with our culinary universe are a joy for the whole team. Growing up in a home filled with the cookbooks of Elizabeth David and Marcella Hazan led Vivien to a life filled with the thrills of good cooking, and cultivated an appreciation of the value of a good glass of wine with meals. Her adolescent summers were spent in the Dordogne wine growing region of France. In spite of being a family of five, 100% of their Saab sedan trunk space was reserved for wine cases on the return trip home to the Netherlands. Priorities! As an adult, Vivien continued her exploration by working in a retail wine shop, an experience which fostered a deep appreciation for family-owned and independently run wine producers. In her free time, Vivien enjoys cooking, baking, drinking excellent wine (duh!) being outside, eating by candlelight, drinking tea, and bringing you great bottles of vino!
