409: The Phony Negroni Movement Is Here with St. Agrestis

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0:31From a consumer standpoint is that people did overdrink at the beginning of the pandemic. And I think it accelerated the excitement around NA in the U.S. And then we come out of the pandemic and people want to make lifestyle corrections. And adjusting drinking habits was a huge part of it. This is Taste. I'm your host, Matt Rodbart.

0:59Today on the show, I have a great conversation with Louis Catazzoni. He is the founder of St. Agrestis, which makes Amaros and Negronis, but also they make probably my favorite N.A. cocktail around, the Phony Negroni. We get into the inception and creation of this great drink. Many of you have written in and love this thing, and we talk all about it. We also talk about what it's like to launch an NA product or spirit or just working in the NA world in general. It's an up-and-down journey, but things are looking really great for St. Agrestus, and I hope you enjoy my conversation.

1:45louis catazzoni welcome to this is taste how are you doing well how are you man it's great to meet you i am such a big fan ofst agrestis the phony negroni and your your new line of products been drinking it for years i feel maybe not years but two years at least how the f did you come up with this N.A. cocktail that tastes just like a Negroni. How did you come up with that? I mean, the journey of landing at the Phony Negroni begins long before we knew we were R &Ding a Phony Negroni, if I'm being totally honest about it. We began R &Ding what would later become our Inferno Bitter and our bottled alcoholic Negroni in 2016.

2:27And much of the supply chain that we started establishing then is still being utilized to create the phony Negroni. We're just not, you know. Yeah. You're not getting a gin. There's no gin involved. Exactly. But the same 30 botanicals that we worked on sourcing way back then and got really good at finding the best farmers and brokers to bring to Brooklyn and turn into Negroni flavors. you know those plants are what go into the phony negroni so i think years of supply chain really is what it it comes down to as far as it tasting as close to a negroni as it does well i mean what i like about the phony negroni we'll talk about the main product it's not just the way it drinks but the finish the finish is bitter in a way and i don't drink i've i've had a negroni you know almost a decade but um i certainly used to drink negronis all the time it was great and there's like a finish with gin and vermouth when you when you get this like it's not like you can say what you say the finishes but it's like it's like bitterness and somehow that you retain that in an na cocktail am i am i talking nonsense or is there something to that no i mean there is something to it we uh we're kind of negroni snobs so we not just from like the simplest palate form we wanted it to have all the complexity all the nuance the start, the finish, the nose everything that a Negroni would have, we didn't want it to be close to a Negroni, we wanted it to taste as close to a Negroni as possible and yeah, the finish is a big part of that and I think a lot of a lot of work went into that and making sure that the bitter backbone really lingers without extracting those alcohols With alcohol, it's complicated, but we spent years figuring it out.

4:27Yeah. Let's go back and talk about your career a little bit. I saw on LinkedIn that you worked at Altria as a rep on the road. What was that job all about? Well, I got recruited out of college at like a career fair to work for Altria. I interned with them the summer before my senior year of college. And they offered me a job the day before. Was it Philip Morris at the time or was it Altria? It was Altria. Yeah. Yeah, and they offered me a job. They had already left New York and moved down to Richmond, their headquarters down to Richmond. But they offered me a job the day before my first day of my senior year.

5:01And I'm first generation Italian American. I called my parents and they're like, yeah, you take that job. Company car, signing bonus, all that. But I was never passionate about it. It was a good start to the career. They invest a lot in their training. but it's kind of strange to be out championing tobacco and then coming home, turning the TV on to unwind for the day. And the first thing you see is a commercial for people to stop smoking paid for by your company. It's a bit odd. Yeah. So your hand is tied behind your back. Yeah. There's no room for creativity. No. You know, there's no room for innovation, which rightfully so, But that's not what I wanted out of an industry or a career.

5:47But you wanted a career. You wanted to start and learn corporate culture and also like learn to sell. I'm sure that has been segued to St. Agrestus. And I feel like selling tobacco. I mean, were you working in innovation with tobacco, like new products? I mean, I was helping launch products as they were innovated. But no, the innovation side of Altria was definitely a corporate Richmond, Virginia thing. And I was based up here. So also a strange place to be selling tobacco in a city where it's extremely taxed as a way to stop use. It was a good start to the career. To your point, I got to go down to headquarters a few times during the almost two years that I worked there to do like real sales boot.

6:37camps that were invaluable. I mean, crazy helpful in a world, a spirits world where like, I think we kind of fly by the seat of our pants as far as sales in our industry. It's like you were a bartender, you were a server, maybe you managed programs. Eventually you start selling because you want to get back out from behind the bar. There's not really training that is super well established, especially at the smaller brand or smaller distributor level. It's like, cool, let me make you knowledgeable and then hopefully you're good at selling. So having a sales kind of foundation definitely has been helpful.

7:15Oh my gosh. And then you ended up obviously nerding out about distilling. Yes. So when does that enter the fray? And when do you realize you want to actually make an Amaro, make products that are distilled or, and then eventually end up in the NA world? So, leaving Altria, I knew I wanted to go into alcohol. I thought I wanted to go work for a big company like a Diageo because all I knew was a big corporate job. Yeah. And I liked the comfort of that big corporate job. But I fell in love with craft. Uh, my first job in, in the spirits industry was working for my now business partner, um, Steven D 'Angelo, who's the founder of Green Hook Gin.

8:04Yep. So I started, I started small thinking, honestly, that maybe I would get experience working for a small brand and use that to go apply for a job at a big brand. Uh, and I just fell in love with craft. I loved being around, um, the still being in the distillery, being able to, I love being able to wear multiple hats and be involved in production ideas, sales ideas, marketing ideas, like the experience that you get working for a two-person company as your first job in the industry is exciting. So, and then I went on to go work in distribution for a little while. Oh, okay. Yeah, I worked for Skernik, who is a New York-based distributor.

8:45And in the early days of a spirits portfolio that has really grown over time. And it was amazing. I was flying to Oaxaca and learning about mescal production. I was flying to the French Caribbean and learning about rum agricole production within the US and Europe, just learning about all these different spirits. And I wasn't necessarily sure that that was all leading towards St. Agrestis. I didn't know for sure. I mean, I hadn't, I just figured I'd work hard, I'd absorb, I'd learn. And eventually, if I wanted to make some sort of an entrepreneurial leap of faith, if I worked hard, the stars would hopefully align.

9:25And I just didn't know what that was necessarily going to lead to. And Santa Grestis was the perfect thing at the perfect time. I mean, let's go back to gin, because when you're doing Green Hook, and you're working with the founder of Green Hook, and you know, that's a heady day for gin, like small batch local gin, right? And this is like a time when gin was being acquired by the big boys. And like the margins on gin are great if you do it right. It's a good business. So were you feeling at the time that gin was at a huge growth opportunity and that you were learning a lot that this like margin was like driving your interest in spirits?

9:56Because like you weren't working with bourbon, which is a totally different business structure. And you weren't in Kentucky, for example, you could do it in New York, right? Yeah. Yeah. Long Island, right? In Brooklyn, Greenpoint. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think what was most exciting about the gin category at that time to me was just like the botanical knowledge really started to become. That was the foundation of it beginning. The botanical just fascination ratios and all of that really began during that time. And seeing botanicals coming in and learning how much a botanical can change from one batch to the next.

10:36And then also how that can lead to a different flavor in an entire finished product. But yeah, gin was so exciting during that time. It was also like pretty competitive. There were some New York distilleries that were literally gunning for big victories and kind of going up against each other. And it was a lot of fun. Oh, my God. Yeah, like Brooklyn gin. Yeah. Two of them, right? They're called Brooklyn. Yes, there's Brooklyn gin and then there's Brooklyn spelled the Dutch way. The Dutch way, right. I remember those two gins were fighting it out in that game. Plus you guys. And there's a lot of really nice domestic gins happening.

11:14Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's some really good gin being made in Brooklyn still. Not all those brands still exist even that were in the battlefield back in 2012 to 2014. Yeah, it was an interesting time. I was writing about spirits a bit myself at that point. Yeah, heady days. Money was flowing pretty freely. Cash was cheap. Startup was happening. Let's get into the founding of Sina Grestis. How do you start it? What's the first product? So Sina Grestis begins with Amaro. Yeah. And then eventually the next subsequent releases are Negroni. And I think some people still refer to San Agrestis as an Amaro company.

11:57I like that. I like that that's our reputation. We've become more and more synonymous with Negroni over time and more and more every day, which I'm also quite proud of. But I like that when we get a piece of press and they're talking about the NA category and its growth and how well certain brands are doing. And if St. Agrestis gets mentioned, often St. Agrestis is called an Amaro company from Brooklyn, New York. and I love that that's where our kind of reputation begins because I think it gives us credibility beyond being an RTD company who might just be sourcing ingredients. We're not just sourcing ingredients.

12:42No, you're making the raw materials. Exactly. I mean, the gin in your Negroni Negroni, do you say where that comes from? Yeah, it's Greenhug gin. It says it right on the bottle. Yeah, why wouldn't it be, you know? Exactly. I was going to say, if it wasn't a local gin, it'd be kind of silly. And then are you using a vermouth that is local as well? We make the vermouth. You make it. So it's part of your process. Yeah. So for the vermouth that goes into our bottled alcoholic Negroni, we import wine from Piemonte. Cortese is the wine. And then we fortify it in Brooklyn into like a classic Torino style vermouth.

13:18and that combined with Green Hook Gin and our Inferno Bitter Aperitivo is the completed Negroni. Yeah. What did Campari say when you launched Inferno? Uh, I don't know. I mean, you must admit at Tales of the Cocktail talking to some of those, you know, those Campari America folks and, hey, nice product. I'm sure not, but. No, you know, I think perhaps more so than the Inferno Bitter Apertivo. Maybe we caught some attention when we launched the Negroni. I mean, our bottled Negroni was for sure the first bottled Negroni in America in a single serve format. There were larger format things in the past, but like single serve RTD format, we were the first ones to do it.

14:08We might have been the first ones to ever do it in the world. So I think like all of a sudden it was like, wait a second. Negroni is so synonymous with Campari. A different brand can call something a Negroni. And I think that became like sort of a light bulb for not just big Italian Apertivo producers, but like small RTD companies in the US said, oh, wow, I can call something in a grunt. Yeah. I'm going to buy one. Similar to the way the gin boom happened, the RTD boom happened. Totally. And I love that you're planting the flag that you were the first because I believe it's accurate because it was really the first I tried.

14:56And I want to segue into going NA because RTDNA, really challenging category for years. I mean, really not a great selection. And, you know, I'm sure you knew that. So how do you build the phony Negroni out of this ethic of doing the Negroni? And then, of course, we can talk about some of your other phony products. Sure. So I went to Bar Convent in Berlin in 2019. And it was actually, it's kind of funny to think back at like what I dreamt having a little table at Bar Convent in Berlin as St. Agrestis might be. The truth is I landed in Berlin with my then girlfriend, now wife, and my cousin from Italy who grew up on the border of Italy and Austria up in Alto Adige met us.

15:47So we had a German speaker and Italian speakers and an English speaker. Louis, you were set. We were set. That's how you do Berlin. It's how you do Berlin. except we didn't, you know, every other brand is there and they built out like a replica of their tasting room or, you know, their super elaborate, you know, kind of booths. And we just had a literal table and the bottles on the table. And it was amazing. The response. It's kind of punk rock. It's Amaro from Brooklyn. Kind of punk rock. It was. And it felt kind of – it's always felt – Santa Gresta has always felt a little bit like we're the indie musicians who are like, there's no record label.

16:29It's us running around doing the thing, you know, trying to – I was delivering out of the back of my car for so long. I mean the Camparis of the world and, you know, all the big boy Amaros of the world are Mileti. And those are like the Warner and Atlantic Records. And here's you in Brooklyn doing your indie shit. Yeah. It's cool. Yeah. It was, it was, and we just like bootstrapped it and grassrooted it and poured for as many people as possible. And like, I don't know, maybe like in-store tastings was the Napster of me. Metaphors, you know, whatever. So the exciting part about NA as a result of that trip to Berlin was that despite all of this investment in going to bar convent by all these big liquor brands, the most exciting brands that were there were non-alcoholic.

17:22And there was so much excitement around, especially non-alcoholic beer, but non-alcoholic in general. And I felt like at that point for the first time, for sure, it was going to come to the U.S. What timestamp? When is this? This is October of 2019. Yeah. First week of October 2019. By the way, pandemic starts a few months later, right? And all the conversations with potential import partners in Europe just stop immediately. and we're left with kind of needing to wrap our heads around the fact that the money which was substantial for a business of our size at that time to go to Berlin just didn't actually lead to any sales it didn't lead to any export partnerships or anything like that but what it what we didn't know is that it inspired the phony negroni and that the phony negroni would eventually be released and eventually be the most important skew that we produce.

18:18We just didn't, we just didn't know it yet. So it felt, it felt a little bit like a waste of money and a waste of time to go to Germany. And it just wasn't, it was the light bulb. And a week after the trip, my business partner, Steven came up with the name Phony Negroni. And then we trademarked it and that's that. And then we launched, we didn't launch it until January 11th of 2022. That was That's when you launched it, 22. Wow. Yep. January 11th, 2022. You've been busy. I have been. It's two years old. Wow. I mean, my observation about your brand is this. It's in the best restaurants. And that's really where I believe you can get credibility for a direct-to-consumer RTD is seeing it in good bars, too, obviously, but like restaurants.

19:02Because when you look at a bar list and you say, wow, there's, you know, an NAB, beer, Athletica obviously was crushing in 22. And you see maybe a phony to go from St. Crestus and you're like at a great restaurant, like in Louisville or in New Orleans or Chicago. And then you order one, obviously, because I'm always looking for NA drinks and I'm obviously, and I'm often disappointed. And so I think there was like, obviously a connection being made from people who understand beverage that you were in these restaurants. So clearly you had a plan to get out there into like some influential places.

19:36Can you tell me a little bit about that? Yeah, I mean, when we launched the Phony Negroni, we thought it was gonna be a line extension that would perform like any of our other SKUs. You know, it was gonna be, we had four items on the market at that time, three spirits and a ready to drink Negroni. And we thought it was gonna perform just as any of those do. And it was not the case from day one, But there's sort of a blessing in the way New York law is written around liquor. And we didn't expect it to be a blessing on day one. But our retail network can't sell the phony Negroni. Because in New York, wine and spirit shops can sell wine and spirits, but they cannot sell NA.

20:24Yeah. Which is something that almost no one knows. Like the amount of times people come in, they fly in from other parts of the country, they go to the liquor store, they buy a bottle of gin, they want tonic. Like they have to be told you got to go around the corner. Yeah, you can buy anything at liquor stores. No. You can buy food either, which is a big problem too. Exactly. Especially for food deserts. And the concept is so strange to people who've grown up or lived anywhere else because you can buy liquor and cheese at the same store in most places, but not here in New York. And that was in the end, in hindsight, really good for us because this is our home market and we were established in the on-premise, not quite to the degree that we are now, but we were established in the on-premise here in New York.

21:01So we couldn't go see our normal retail friends. We had to go see our on-prem friends. And the response was immediately very, very warm. And then the volume was immediately much higher than we expected. So we were like, yeah, let's focus entirely on getting this into as many of the on-prem as possible. And then it's sort of like many products have in the past in like the right circles snowballed without us even having to touch it in some cases. Bartenders, bar managers drinking less than we used to. So if you're having a dinner out on a night off and you found phony Negroni, chances are at some point you emailed us and got in touch with us as opposed to us having to go in and kick your door down.

21:51I mean, it was certainly like a level of clout if you carried it in your bar. I feel like at some point, obviously 22 is probably the earliest, But like even in 23, you could see it, I'm sure, places that, you know, brought it in with the idea that this is going to make a statement in our NA list, right? Yeah. I mean, especially in those days, there weren't in all cases NA menus, NA sections of menus, you know, and there still aren't. Let's be real. Even here in our bubble of New York, there still aren't NA sections of every menu. But you brought up athletic before, and if athletic was doing well, it was like, well, why wouldn't we bring in this thing that tastes just like a Negroni and that people love?

22:37Yeah, if they're selling like a level of athletic, obviously there's an appetite for doing NA. Let me ask you about that initial buzz, that initial – like it started selling better. Is that just because the product was – the product market fit was perfect, to use a business term? like it was just really like a great product for this like market that was drinking less and like way better than anything else like by a long shot i think that definitely has a lot to do with it i think we were the right product with the right flavor profile yeah at the right price not sweet which is i think that's the way i would articulate it like the right flavor profile which is complexity with a bitter finish and not kool-aid definitely yeah um i think when you Yeah, the right product also comes down to the color.

23:24Like it looks like a Negroni. The right package being in glass, very important for us because you can see that beautiful opulent red hue and it not be totally blocked by a can. And also we needed to be in a package that was presentable at the fancy restaurants that we wanted to be in and the prolific cocktail bars that we wanted to be in because we wanted them to present the bottle. Do you feel like the – I'm just going to be frank, like the shittiness of all these like liquor proxies, these NA proxies. I'm going to be bully but say like the Seedlips of the world because God, I was given like how many bottles of Seedlip?

24:07and I never liked it. I never could find a way to mix it. I'm sure there's great ways to mix with seed lip, but I personally couldn't find it. But the fact that you were able to do something really impressive in the NA category with all this money towards NA spirits being poured in and people having like a really negative response. I think that we had to overcome in launching our first alcoholic RTD. We had to overcome preconceived notions that an RTD couldn't be good because there weren't quality RTDs on the market yet. It was us and the Rock and Rye from Hoxedlers. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was it.

24:44It was just those two when we launched the Negroni. Fast forward to when we launched the Phony Negroni, and I think we were turned away by beverage directors and probably by the consumers who had tried things and didn't necessarily enjoy them. Our goal was always to just be like, but you got to try it, you know? But, okay, hey, I'm knocking on your door, which the amount of doors I've pulled on just in this borough alone in Manhattan is insane. But I pull on the locked door, and then when you get the right person, they say, oh, NA, no, I'm not interested. I haven't had anything that I like yet.

25:22Or it's a lot of work. It's 10 ingredients to make something, you know, taste right. And it's like, cool, that's not this. You got to try this. And I think that there's a lot of quality NA out there. In fact, I've had some amazing cocktails with Seedlip. I think it is intimidating for the consumer to then go home and think they can recreate that because let's call it what it is. A good bartender isn't living in every single home in America. Some people who like making cocktails at home are competent. Some are good. Some are great. But the average consumer who's no longer drinking, you're not going to go home and necessarily make a nine ingredient with three special syrups.

26:08Especially with the baseline of Negroni being a three-part drink. Definitely. Right. And then like you don't want to make an NA version of Negroni with 16 items or even five because that's two more than what we are used to. And I think like no one's making drinks with more than five components. I mean there are obviously hobbyists, but no. Sure. I agree. And the amount of times folks said, oh, we're making something like a non-alcoholic Negroni, a no-groni. And then we walk in, they taste and like, damn, this thing's better than what I'm making. I don't have to spend three hours doing prep in the kitchen or have my, you know, barbacks doing prep in the kitchen.

26:43And the price works. So why would I continue to make my thing that's inferior and costs more? Yeah. So let's get down to the formulation of the N.A. Phony Negroni. Was it a long process to get there or was it like snap a finger and it's there? Yeah, it was a long process. The nice part about it was we spent so much of our time pre-pandemic out doing sales. And the pandemic actually created this nice opportunity for us to be able to sit inside the distillery and for myself and Steven to do some really in-depth experiments and combinations. And that man is very talented. And just tweaking and have – we couldn't go see anybody.

27:31We weren't flying to California to go do sales. We weren't even, you know, going into Manhattan or other parts of Brooklyn to do sales. We were stuck in the distillery. Yeah. And, you know, we started – the concept was born in 2019. The product wasn't launched until 2022. and that was R &D. That was like serious, serious, sometimes very intense R &D. Yeah. It's interesting how the pandemic helped certain individuals along the way. I mean, look. Stop and slow down and actually figure out what you really needed to sell. Yeah, I mean, it put things into perspective for so many people. Yeah. For us, it was, we thought we were going to go out of business.

28:14I mean, anyone who was deeply involved in on-premise in this category or in the industry in general, not just here but across the world, if you paid your bills because of the on -premise, you thought you were going to go out of business. And we thought we would go out of business. But we just reinvented ourselves every day and figured it out and reinvented ourselves and figured it out. And we survived it. And I think the other part of the pandemic from a consumer standpoint is that people did overdrink at the beginning of the pandemic. And I think it accelerated the excitement around NA in the U.S.

28:56I just think we weren't necessarily going to be where we are today without folks sitting at home and being so scared of what was going to happen and drinking to kind of fix that. And then we come out of the pandemic and people want to make lifestyle corrections. And adjusting drinking habits was a huge part of it. Whether people went sober or just said, I don't drink Monday through Thursday anymore. Or I will do dry January every year or sober October or whatever it is. Whether you're fully sober or not, I think a lot of folks evaluated their drinking habits. I think a lot of that had to do with drinking too much for a while.