(NEW YORK, NY–SEPTEMBER 2026) On September 15th, Rosenthal Wine Merchant (RWM) celebrated the start of Rosenthal Wine Merchant’s 50th year in business. The celebration gathered key stakeholders and supporters at the RWM Headquarters at 10 Grand in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
Positioning himself against the mainstream since the beginning, Neal was an early advocate of terroir–the idea that the particular combination of soil, climate, grape variety, and human history are responsible for the unique characteristics of a wine. To Neal, these are qualities that uncover the truth in wine while commanding the consumer’s respect for the natural world and thus their well-being. “The best of wines always proudly tell you from where they come,” he writes in his 2008 memoir Reflections of a Wine Merchant. Neal consistently and publicly defended this belief, becoming a fierce crusader against elite wine critics like Robert Parker whose reign drove the homogenization of wines during the late 1990s and into the 2010s. Today, Neal still champions fine wine with a strong sense of place and honest character–for which there is an ever growing audience.
RWM started in 1977 as a humble, one-man retail operation located in New York City. Neal Rosenthal, having stepped away from his law practice, was joined shortly thereafter by his partner Kerry Madigan, and the two expanded into an importer and distributor of fine wines and specialty food products. The RWM portfolio has grown to include over 150 suppliers, with growers hailing from almost every viticultural area of France and Italy, as well as the mountainous Valais and Vaud districts of Switzerland, Spanish Catalonia, and four of Austria’s major wine growing regions.
In the months to follow, Neal will visit Austin, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Washington, DC to include longstanding partners in key markets in the celebration. As part of the celebration, RWM will release a series of special cuveés from some of Rosenthal’s longtime grower partners like Montevertine, Brovia and Chezeaux among others.
For more information please contact:
Shveta Berry, shveta@rosenthalwinemerchant.com
Grower Spotlights
Since coming home to work at his family’s domaine full-time in 2018, Paul Fumoso—with mom Stéphanie by his side—has steered Gour de Chaulé to new heights, and the wines of this stalwart Gigondas estate are more popular stateside than ever.
Grower Spotlights
Rather than crafting their lineup to accommodate perceived market demand, Philippe and Vincent allow the character of the growing season to dictate which wines they produce from a given harvest.
Grower Spotlights
In Jacques’ modest cellar beneath his house in Montigny-les-Arsures, Emeric learned the virtues of restraint and the value in trusting one’s fruit; he learned to act as shepherd rather than “winemaker,” and his wines at Les Matheny embody that philosophy arguably more emphatically than even Puffeney’s did.
