Just inside the door of Naples Italian specialty foods store Ambrosi & Sons is a prismatic map of Italy’s familiar boot. Flecks of orange represent the foggy northern vineyards where nebbiolo grapes are grown for vintages of Piedmontese Barolo and Barbaresco. Further south, patches of purple outline the rolling hills of Chianti, heavy with sangiovese vines. More pops of color label dozens of less familiar wines and their regions: sparkling red lambrusco from central Tuscany’s Emilia Romagna, violet-perfumed Lacrima Morro d’Alba from Marche and full-bodied uva di troia from sun-soaked Puglia, to name a few. It’s this last group that shop owner Rudy Ambrosi wants you to uncork and explore. “I try to have as many regions represented as possible,” he says, motioning to one wall of the shop, lined with a few hundred bottles. “Italy has these treasures—the most varietals of any country and all these little microclimates that don’t exist anywhere else in the world. You can be adventurous.”
Italian vintners cultivate more than 500 varietals—about two-thirds endemic to the country—but most Italian grapes are relatively unknown. The country’s 20 regions are blessed with a wide variety of terroirs, from alpine foothills to verdant countrysides to volcanic slopes, all yielding an abundance of deliciously drinkable, expressive wines. Some, like Tuscan Brunello di Montalcino and bubbly prosecco, are world-famous, but most are criminally underrated outside their native land. Rudy picks up a bottle of lagrein, a velvety red native to Trentino-Alto-Adige, the northern region from where his father hails. “It’s such a small varietal, you won’t find it in Total Wine,” he says.
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Italian countryside
Rudy Ambrosi stocks only Italian wines at his eponymous specialty food store in Naples, championing lesser-known indigenous grapes and small, multigenerational producers.
Rudy’s father emigrated to the United States in the 1950s, met Rudy’s Sardinian mom and settled in Kansas City. Every summer, the family returned to Italy, where Rudy and his brothers were exposed to Italian culture, food traditions and wine from a young age. “When I was a kid, I was given 7UP with [a splash] of wine,” he recalls. “When we were traveling, it was always about the food.” As an adult, Rudy moved to Southwest Florida and, in 2018, bought a building in an industrial neighborhood near the airport to house his paper supply company. The warehouse had extra square footage out front, and Rudy transformed it into an emporium of imported Italian foods. He filled shelves with artisanal products like buttery cookies scented with Sicilian lemon and orange; syrupy, 12-year-old balsamic vinegar; finely milled ‘00’ flour for pizza dough; and Parmigiano Reggiano made from the coveted milk of red cows.
Wine was the natural next step. Rudy and his oldest son, Michael, started researching distributors, looking through catalogs of wines to find Italian varietals they liked but rarely saw in the United States. In addition to the grapes, the pair focused on the ethos behind the bottles brought into the shop. Ambrosi & Sons wines are almost exclusively from small, multigenerational family estates where the vintners oversee the production from vine to bottle. “We’re a small, family-owned business. We want to do business with other small, family-owned businesses,” Rudy says. “We want to know these people. How many generations have they been doing this? Who owns the land?”
You won’t find Bordeaux or California cabernet here. The wholly Italian collection has now ballooned to about 300 selections. Ask Rudy to choose some bottles and he might lead you to a minimal-intervention franciacorta (an Italian sparkler produced in the same method as Champagne) from rising-star producer Nicola Gatta; a white blend from Sicily that tastes of ripe pear with a lick of minerality; or a 24-year-old, award-winning vin santo meant to be savored with Tuscan almond biscotti, which, of course, you can also pick up at the shop. For something surprising, there’s a pinot noir from the coastal Maremma of Tuscany, better known for its sangiovese and vermentino grapes. “You never hear of anybody growing pinot noir in Tuscany, but it’s fantastic—really different,” he says.
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Photography by Brian Tietz
amarone wine bottle from the shelf
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Photography by Brian Tietz
pumellu wine bottle and glass
The shop hosts tastings three to four times a month during season, featuring bottles like Angelo Rivano Puméllu. The Sardinian blend is hand-harvested from a single parcel of the low-intervention winery owned by Rudy’s cousin.
The Ambrosis encourage adventurous imbibing. They nudge customers out of their Chianti- and pinot grigio-soaked comfort zones through wine tastings in the shop three or four times a month during season. There’s no set structure. Sometimes, a vintner or distributor pours selections from their portfolio; other times, Rudy uncorks five bottles he’s excited about at the moment. If participants decide to go home with a few bottles, they may be pleasantly surprised by the pricing. “For the value, I think Italian wines are the best around,” Rudy says, noting that less international demand for underrecognized native grapes often equates to lower prices.
To find more mom-and-pop vintners for the shop, Michael expanded into distribution. In 2023, he launched a separate arm, Ambrosi Imports, dedicated to small-batch, sustainably farmed wines. “I’m not just looking for good wine; I’m looking for the full picture that makes artisan wine,” the younger Ambrosi says. His growing client list includes Osteria Tulia, D’Amico’s The Continental and The Wine Merchant. “We want to show people who only know Chianti or prosecco the native varieties from Italy,” Michael says. “We’re proud to be Italian and have made that our mission.”
Photography by Brian Tietz
rudy and michael ambrosi
Rudy’s oldest son, Michael, established a separate wine-import business in 2023 focused on sustainable, small-production wines. His clients include his dad and Naples restaurants Osteria Tulia and The Continental.