Fran Kysela (left) with Josh Raynolds of Tanzer's International Wine Cellar, May 2013
Fran Kysela's initial interest in wine was inherited from his father, who is one of the top collectors in the country and still maintains a 4,000 bottle cellar in Cleveland, OH. While attending graduate school at Cleveland State University & majoring in Zoology, Fran took a position selling Fetzer & Gallo wines for a local distributor (Goodman Beverage). Being a student with little money, he took the job knowing he could use the extra income and thinking, erroneously, that he could work in the wine business "part time". The wine business soon became all consuming and he left graduate school all together.
Flash forward to 2016 and Fran has been in the wine business for 36 years. He has worked as a wholesale representative, wine steward, national sales director and now wine importer. In 1989, he received the Master Sommelier award from the British Court of Master Sommeliers. He passed the tasting half of the Master of Wine exam in 1992 and hopes to complete the remainder of the MW exam in the future. Fran Kysela founded his wine importing & distributing company in 1994 and has since become one of the most respected wine professionals in the country.
"Fran Kysela, unlike most Americans, was born into a family that consumed and appreciated fine wine. One of the youngest specialty importers, Kysela began his career as the national sales manager for the import arm of Kermit Lynch's sprawling wine business. Subsequently, he worked briefly for another high quality importer, Weygandt-Metzler in Unionville, Pennsylvania. Inevitably, Kysela founded his own firm, dedicated to discovering high quality top estates in France and Italy [and Portugal]. Kysela's offerings all tend to be extremely pure, ripe, fruity wines...in short, faithful reflections of their appellations. He is not an aggressive interventionalistic importer à la Robert Kacher (or to a lesser extent, Neal Rosenthal, Eric Salomon, or Peter Weygandt), but neither does he permit his producers to take a laissez-faire approach to their work. In a few short years Kysela has emerged as one of the finest palates and selectors of top wine, whether it be an inexpensive Muscadet or a top of the line Burgundy."
-Robert Parker, The Wine Advocate, Issue #205
Interview with Gordon J. Bernhardt of Executive Leaders Radio
Fran Kysela Biography and C.V.
