Welcome. Welcome to The Best 5 Minute Wine Podcast with Forrest Kelly.

We continue our conversation with Lindsey Gabbard, co founders Sommelier Rimessa Roscioli in Rome, Italy. In part one, we heard about your journey from Michigan to Rome. Let's get the rest of that story.

The Best 5 Minute Wine Podcast

I basically had to go back to the US after my ten weeks being abroad. And then I came back and surprised him a month and a half later and stayed out there for another two weeks, started working beside him pretty much every night I was there. And then after my 90 days, renewed again, I came out to Italy for another three months and again was working beside him. And then we opened up. After we got kicked out of the old location, we opened up temporarily in a place for eight months that had two tasting rooms. So I had to do one of the tastings, and he did the other in the other room. And that's when we started really formally working together. And then eventually, that was only an eight month lease, so we had to find another location. And the new location we found was much larger. And so we decided to form a partnership with four of us with the Richoli family for remounts.

Once we're in Rome, can you kind of explain how we find the restaurant, the wine bar, the tasting room?

Sure, if you. Well, most people would know Campo di Fiori, so if you come from Campo di Fiori, we're kind of. Like I said, we're also still tucked away a little bit. We're not on the main. Our main restaurant, Salome Rircioli, is on kind of a main road there called Viri Giubinari. We are about 300 meters behind Rimessa Roscioli going closer towards the Ponte Sisto. We're about a two minute, three minute walk from the Ponte Sisto, which is the bridge that connects trastevere over towards Campo de Fiori.

So you're doing all of these activities to make Rimessa Roscioli a success. I gotta ask, how's your italian?

I'm still learning it every single day, but I didn't know any before I came, so it's really been just since I've got here. But even the first five years, I was mainly speaking in English because I host the wine tastings in English, and I sound when I spoke in English, so. And you can really get around in Rome without having any Italian. So really, it's not until the last few years that I really started speaking it.

Once you arrive at Rimessa Roscioli There isn't a lack of things to do. You've got tastings, you've got the restaurants, you've got cooking classes, got the food tour, you've got private groups. Let's kind of go through all of that. When somebody shows up, what can they do?

Oh, gosh. Well, we start, our dinner service actually starts at 05:00 p.m. we host one of our wine and food pairing dinners at 05:00 p.m. and at 08:00 p.m. and then we also offer an a la carte service at 07:00 p.m. more or less at 09:00 p.m. so we are, and we probably have, I don't know, a hundred seats or so in our location. So if you can do the math there, a few, a few turns, we have a few hundred, a couple hundred people coming through, probably about an average 170 at least in the evenings. But we're also open during the day for cooking classes. So if you add that on top, we kind of just don't stop.

Yeah, let me rewind a little bit. And so describe the business, because it's. The website is very expansive, and I was going down rabbit holes left and right, just like, wow, they pretty much do everything. But basically the first part you do is what?

Yeah, we're definitely a pretty multifaceted business. We're not just your typical restaurant or wine bar. We were born from the idea of a fixed menu of wines and foods which were paired together. Six wines paired with different fruit foods and a plate of pasta, tiramisu, etcetera. So that was the way we were born for about eight or so years. That was just the concept of rimasa rusioli. When we opened up the new location, like I said, we had a lot more space, so we decided to add an a la carte menu. We also offered extra virgin olive oil tastings. We have now cooking classes throughout the day. We then also, after probably about seven years ago at this point, we also created the Richoli Wine Club. So beyond just all the services that we do in our Rome restaurant and location, people who want to kind of continue their journey with all that we do can also subscribe to our wine club. And we ship 24 wines per year from similar concepts. Of all the wines that we work with in the restaurant, all artisan wines from smaller producers, we do even some winemaker collaborations, so those can also be shipped across to the US. We have about 2500 customer members in the US. Currently.

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