Dialect Imports was built on the belief that wine is more than a product, it’s a language of place, people, and shared values. In this Q&A, I sat down with cofounder Christina Solazzo to trace the path that led to Dialect: from being a lifelong “cellar rat,” to studying how food and wine reflect place and culture, to building a values-driven importing company alongside her father. Christina shares how partnership with producers, respect for “patrimonio”, and the power of experiential connection shape Dialect’s growing portfolio.
Starting Dialect
Q: You’re building Dialect alongside your dad, Anthony, who had a history of importing wine. Do you have any early memories of wine, food, or time abroad that still stick with you today? And how did your own background in marketing, events, and sustainability influence the way you jumped into this with him?
My dad had briefly imported wine while I was growing up, but I was always his “cellar rat.” I’d help organize his wine collection, a task I am roped into every visit home to this day. With time he’d quiz me on wine like it was our version of playing cards – could I identify what grape it was by smelling it, after tasting it could I guess the producer or specific single vineyard. Being Italian-American, food was obviously a big part of our family and upbringing and when I got to college, I studied sociology and political science but effectively did the coursework for a Food Studies major, which is what one of my masters degrees is in.
I was particularly obsessed with the idea of local food and how it can embody the spirit of a place, and wine is one of the best ways to quite literally bottle that up when it comes to terroir. So, that was my connecting thread throughout everything I did from then on – terroir.
Both my undergraduate and graduate theses looked at how wine as a product created the opportunity for this commodification of terroir and how that could enable producers to be competitive in a global marketplace. My graduate thesis literally included a business plan for a wine importing company that was the basis of Dialect Imports.
My first job was with a dining service provider and their main identifier was working with local suppliers. I handled marketing for the account and would plan events with partners, including bringing in local producers for pop ups, organizing field trips for students to go to farms or coffee roasters, and highlighting the stories of the people back-of-house. The next role I had was more explicitly focused on enabling supply chain relationships between local food producers, accounts, and consumers.
In my last role before Dialect, I had the opportunity to manage events and various marketing activities for wine and spirits on a much larger scale. This felt like a pivotal shift for me, because this entire time I was in the hospitality or food and beverage sphere, that was always the case – but I was now directly back working with the product I was most committed to. To me, events are critical to wine sales. Consumers can’t just travel to a winery to learn about it, right? So, events allow you to bring those stories, those people to them.
Any time you’re talking about a consumable product, it’s based on the idea that it is an experiential good. Everyone talks about how the industry is failing to capture new consumers or engage young people. Events are the best way to prolong the life-cycle of that consumer.
Essentially, wine is this global localized, ‘glocal’ product that allows you to combine the experiences of your own terroir, your own sense of place, with another that’s on the other side of the globe. And this is really cool when you have a bottle you can age because then you can tuck that away and revisit that experience at a later point. You get to engage and feel connected in a way that doesn’t feel shallow, but deeply personal. And what I’ve seen in every role I’ve had is that we crave that connection
Philosophy & the Portfolio
Q: A lot of Dialect’s producers are family-run and really tied to their land. Why does that kind of story matter so much to you?
It’s interesting to me culturally to see the difference in the US versus Italy as to how family-run businesses are viewed. In Italy, that’s the given. In the US, we have more of the conversation around nepotism, which is a fair complaint and one that I’m very aware of. At one point when I was in college and I was interviewing Giampaolo Tabarrini, he spoke about this idea of patrimonio, it’s this Italian concept of having a deep respect for the knowledge or heritage that is passed down from generation to generation. It’s one of those phrases that you really have to go into explaining when translating, but just is – like it just sums up so many things all at once. Like you have a duty to carry forward what has been given to you, but it’s more than just legacy or heritage.
I am profoundly grateful to be able to do this with my dad: to share this with him and to learn from him. His professional career was not defined by the hospitality industry, it was insurance, the opposite end of the spectrum. But his first job was sweeping and stocking shelves at the Solazzo Market. His father, grandfather, and uncle owned and operated a family-run food business. When my grandpa retired and sold the business, the new owners elected to keep the name and it’s still there to this day in Yonkers, New York. We started Dialect not long after my grandpa died and I was very aware of how fortunate I was to have this connection to him still. For me, Dialect is patrimonio.
Q: When you’re tasting something from a new producer, what makes you think, okay, this feels like a fit for Dialect — beyond just the wine itself?
I strongly believe that the philosophy of the producer comes through in their winemaking. You can tell how much respect they have for their land based on how much intervention they do, whether in the field or the cellar. The grape varieties they choose to work with, especially as it relates to Italy, tells you about their commitment to indigenous foodways. If they go through the effort to do single vineyard production, they’re striving to create something really special that is defined by its terroir. When someone is willing to experiment or go outside their norm, that tells you they’re willing to take a risk on something they believe in. Then you taste the wine and decide if you like it or not.
But beyond that there’s this chemistry you look for between yourself and the producer because you have to trust one another. Especially when working with small producers where their family name is attached to the brand, because in that instance they are trusting you with their name. Because of that we are cautious when moving ahead with someone. There are producers that I’d love to work with, but we just might not be at a point where we can.
Women in Wine
Q: Dialect is a Women Business Enterprise, and so many of the producers you work with are women-led. Was that something you planned from the start, or did it just naturally take shape?
When we first started, we kind of just included female producers as like an attribute to consider, similar to ok this is organic vs biodynamic, etc. But that was never a requirement so much as something about them. The ultimate deciding factor was, do we like this wine? We knew that we wanted to work with female producers, but we didn’t set out to have as much of the portfolio that we have be as female-driven as it is. The reality is that there are a lot of producers making really good wine, and a lot of them just happen to be women.
Q: Wine importing and distribution can still feel pretty male-heavy at times. Have you run into any challenges as a woman founder, and how have you handled them?
I think it’s easy for me to forget that this is the case sometimes, because hospitality today is very female driven and led. Even by extension wine media has a lot of women as some of the leading voices in the industry. I think a challenge has been navigating this double-edged sword where our identifier gets limited to being ‘women in wine,’ which like yes, very proud of that and I don’t want to push that away. But at the same time, I want our identifier to be that we have really good wine.
Q: What does it mean to you to build a company that really makes space for women across the wine world?
To me it feels like that’s just how a company should be. It shouldn’t be a big thing to make space for women in the wine world because we exist and it should just be a natural thing to be included at the table. Literally, in this case.
Building Dialect & What’s Ahead
Q: So far, what’s been the toughest part of building Dialect, and what’s been the most rewarding?
There are so many things outside of your control. When we started we got hit by two hurricanes and the industry was in such a flux and then there were tariffs. I think the number one thing a small business owner asks themselves every day when they wake up is, why am I doing this? And then someone really sees you, or your products, the way you’d hope they’d see them and that’s the reward.
Q: As Dialect grows, what are you most excited about right now?
I think the concept that I get to do this is what excites me the most. Like I was 19 and decided to go full throttle into making this happen and was very purposeful in identifying what I needed to do to get here. Like every internship, every class, every essay – that I could make connect to this goal, I did it. The same for when I entered my professional career. So, it’s just really exciting to see that come to fruition as we continue to grow.
Q: If someone wanted to build a values-driven business in wine, what advice would you give them?
There’s this famous quote by Wendell Berry, who is an agricultural poet and essayist, “Eating is an agricultural act.” The same could be said for drinking. Connecting the product to where it originated from but also that you, whether as a consumer or business owner, are making a conscious decision by choosing what you choose to engage with. To that end, any business in wine is going to be values-driven, it just comes down to what values you ascribe to. So, know your values and let that be your driving force every day.
Q: And to wrap it up… When you open a bottle from the Dialect portfolio at home, what do you hope people feel around the table?
I want you to feel like you’re opening a bottle your friend gave you. Regardless of the price point. I want you to feel like this is a bottle your friend gave you and you can’t wait to tell them what you thought of it.
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