Paulo Carminati

Senior Area Sales Manager, Northeast

My first foray into the beverage business came as a beer buyer for a small retailer chain in MA.  While at the store I became smitten with wine and learned and tasted as much as I could.  I joined Palm Bay Imports as a Latin Portfolio manager in 2005, specializing in wines from Spain, Portugal, Chile & Argentina.  Travelling to those regions and seeing the viticulture firsthand really cemented my passion in the fine wine industry.  Palm Bay then promoted me into a Genesis Estates manager, focusing on their fine wine estates from Italy and beyond.

Upon moving to New York in 2009, I had the pleasure of representing Martine Saunier and her wonderful French portfolio in New York City.  The exposure to both legendary wineries and the equally legendary restaurants and retailers buying them really expanded my perspective of the high-end wine business.  After a stint importing artisanal cachaça from my home country of Brazil  I joined August Wine Group, a Seattle-based boutique wine importer, in 2012 as a Northeast Regional Manager to help get some smaller but wonderful wineries the representation and respect they deserved from Maine down to Washington DC.

I couldn’t be more proud and honored to have joined the Folio team and their benchmark family winery partners in Oct 2016 as the NY / NJ / PA Senior Area Sales Manager.  My local team are all rock stars and distribution network has a high ceiling for success.

I live in Brooklyn with my wife and two kids under the age of 3, so sleep and free time is in short supply.  Prior to children and outside of the wine industry I had a good run as a musician, singing with the Boston Symphony for a decade, gigging with a Bossa Nova quartet in NYC and working as a vocal coach / arranger with the likes of James Taylor.