Goosebumps

By Charles Lazzara, CEO and Founder

I received a letter in the mail today from my mom. It was actually my letter, to my family, that I wrote in December of 2002 on my last day studying abroad in Italy. Reading the letter made me cry for many reasons. I realized how much that trip changed the course of my life.

Prior to that first trip abroad I had been on an airplane for my 8th grade field trip from Indiana to D.C. — the pilgrimage of America’s youth — and once more on a trip out West with my family where the six of us drove from Las Vegas to Yosemite in an Astro minivan. Aside from being crammed in that van, it was the trip of a lifetime.

Travel changes people. It opens the heart and mind if done well; but one must be open to seeing the world, not just passing through it to post selfies. Finding the way is the purpose of traveling, even if there is no real destination. I departed Italy in 2002 having traveled without purpose, but I found my way.

Just as Franco Ziliani described to me his feeling on Berlucchi’s first vintage of Franciacorta in 1961, I remember that chill running through my spine when I had my first glass of great wine on the gravel footpath outside the cellar door of Poggerino.

Since that first step at Poggerino 15 years ago, I’ve been traveling Europe’s wine regions in search of a feeling I had the month of my 21st birthday, October 2002, in Radda in Chianti… Goosebumps.