About us
Our goal at Selection Massale is to import the best natural wines, period. We do not work in every region or try to fulfill every need, but rather bring what we believe to be the most exciting, precise, well-made natural wines available.
Our selections come from small wineries. Our vignerons work the land organically for the most part, biodynamically for some. All the wines are fermented naturally and made without cellar trickery or makeup. We favor clean, highly drinkable wines. We want our wines to be the first bottles emptied at the dinner table, but the longest remembered.
Our selections come from small wineries. Our vignerons work the land organically for the most part, biodynamically for some. All the wines are fermented naturally and made without cellar trickery or makeup. We favor clean, highly drinkable wines. We want our wines to be the first bottles emptied at the dinner table, but the longest remembered.
The Team
Cory Cartwright was brought up in teetotaling Utah, where he met his wife Emily, an ultra-marathoner and lover of natural wines. In Utah wine wasn't in abundance but judgment (and Natural Light) were. He moved to sunny California to design videogames, and started drinking oaky pinots and whatever else he could. One day he had a bottle of Pineau d'Aunis that changed his life and never looked back. He got out of tech and started working with the boys at Terroir. Guilhaume and he decided they should be importing wine after a bottle of Jerome Lenoir's Chinon. He also bakes bread in his Fruitvale home with two cats and his poodle Gus.
Guilhaume Gerard is Selection Massale's co-founder and co-owner. He grew up between Paris and the south of France before moving to the States. In 2007 he opened one of the first natural wine bar in San Francisco. He left to start Selection Massale in 2010. Guilhaume now resides in New York City with his wife Kimberly and their two kids, Louis and Georges.
Carlos Camacho is a wine drinker who lives in the beautiful Carmel Valley. Carlos started drinking the heavy Cabs back in the 90s, and after almost a 20 year journey, he is back drinking Cabs, although the ones in our portfolio aren't exactly kissing cousins of Napa Cabs. He discovered the existence of wine gurus Cory and Guilhaume through Cory’s blog, and later when they started Selection Massale, he bought everything they sold. After a while he was invited to become a partner in Selection Massale, and he is very happy about it. With Guilhaume, he is in the search of the best steak and when they get together they end up eating way to much of it. He travels to visit his family in Ecuador constantly and wishes he could also import Selection Massale’s wine there.
Jim Hanlon co-founded Selection Massale with Guilhaume and Cory in 2010 after getting to know each over many glasses at Terroir. Jim makes his living as a lawyer and leaves the hard work to his co-owners, instead spending most of his time asking why we can't import more bottles from Etienne Thiebaud. He lives in Oakland with his wife Sita, his son Judah and daughter Sylvie.
Wolfgang Weber is a recovering former wine critic who lives in San Francisco. One evening after tasting too many over-extracted Cabernets from God-knows-where, he found himself walking past a small storefront on Folsom Street with some bottles in the window and a sign that sort of ripped off the label of a famous wine from Burgundy. Intrigued, he stepped inside and met Guilhaume behind the bar at the recently opened Terroir Natural Wine Merchant. Around the same time, he connected with Cory on the Interwebs over a shared interest in Stereolab and Marcel Lapierre (for the record, Wolfgang still feels this is one of the best wine pairings ever; 112 points, easily). Eventually Cory and Guilhaume started Selection Massale; eventually Wolfgang traded the glamorous world of wine criticism for the world of wine distribution and podcast addiction; eventually Cory and Guilhaume asked Wolfgang to sell Selection Massale in the Bay Area. Wolfgang also likes bikes, disco and well-curated jukeboxes.
Dhrubo Mazumdar spent most of his adult life focused on the food and beverage industry in NYC — including turns at Brooklyn’s Slope Cellars and Fort Defiance — where he sharpened his wine knowledge and enthusiasm. His passion for good things made well makes him an ebullient ambassador for Selection Massale. He lives in Queens with his wife, with whom he plans to conquer the world one delicious meal at a time.
From line cook to cellar rat, Chad Hinds cut his teeth in the wine industry working for the likes of Pax Mahle of Wind Gap Wines and Kevin Kelley of The Natural Process Alliance and Salinia. Although he reveled in my experiences working in the cellar, Chad joined the wine department at Bi-Rite Market in San Francisco to get a taste of the retail world and gain exposure to new and interesting wines. While working at Bi-Rite, it didn't take long to realize that all of his favorite wines on the shelf were imported by Selection Massale (to the degree that he dressed as the Boutanche "Party Pig" for Halloween), and when the opportunity arose to work closer with the book on the sales side, he leaped at it. When not representing Selection Massale all across the Bay Area, he makes a little wine under his own label Methode Sauvage.
After moving to New York City from his home state of New Hampshire, Tim Gagnon became enveloped in the world of wine by working in restaurants around the city while studying at Pratt Institute. After various forays into different creative outlets, and a brief stint living in London, he returned to New York to pursue wine full time. It was around that time that he met Guilhaume while working at a small shop called Thirst in Brooklyn, and began voraciously drinking as many wines from Selection Massale as possible. He took a brief respite from the city and worked as a cellar rat and farm hand in upstate New York before coming back to the city to deepen his focus on wine, notably as Wine and Spirits Buyer at Chambers Street Wines. A trip to France in 2015 solidified Tim and Guilhaume’s friendship, but not until Drake’s new album from that year was listened to at least 100 times. He currently resides in Brooklyn and is definitely not Australian. He is very happy to now call Selection Massale home.
Nadim Audi grew up between France and Lebanon and developed a taste for drinking Beaujolais at the Nouvelle Mairie in Paris instead of attending lectures at the nearby Sorbonne. He traded wine for journalism for a few years tocover the Middle East from Egypt, but it called him back when he moved to Chicago. He ran into the Mannschaft in 2011 while trying to figure out a way to score some Lenoir Chinon in the U.S. After a few years of working retail in the city he is excited to share the wines with his fellow Chicagoans. He lives in Logan Square with his wife and a pair of recent arrivals.
Coming to New York from Connecticut, wine wasn’t something on Braeden Burke’s radar. However, when offered a position as Assistant to the Beverage Director at Keens Steakhouse, he jumped on the opportunity. Working in the cellar he developed a love for quality wines from all over the world. From here he moved on to be the Assistant Manager of Bottlenose Wine Company, a boutique wine shop in Murray Hill, where he stayed for the next two years developing his palate and becoming familiar with natural and biodynamic wines. In his quest to take on all sides of the industry he has since found his way to Selection Massale and at only twenty-four years old he can only keep climbing from here.
John has an insatiable curiosity, which found itself peering down the rabbit hole of natural wine. At worst he’s a culture vulture, at best an autodidact. Regardless, he is pleased to apply himself at the behest of Selection Massale. He hails from Western New York where his family maintains a small vineyard on Keuka Lake.
Ann Marie feels pretty special to have benefited from so much education in Chicago's intimate natural wine community. She spent several years working at Webster's Wine Bar, continually floored by the spectacular folks she worked with and their knowledge of the bottles on the deep, diverse, and fun list. She's become enamored of wine travel; the people and stories she found rambling in and around the vines. She countinues to scratch her itch to provide hospitality at Diversey Wine and Café Marie-Jeanne while also slinging Selection Massale across Chicago. At any given time she's on a bicycle, over-caffeinated, or hungry for a cheeseburger.