MEET STEPHANIE CUADRA
Stephanie Cuadra founded Terrestoria Wine Imports on a simple conviction: that Utah wine lovers deserved access to the kind of wines usually reserved for a handful of coastal markets, and that Utah's state-controlled system, far from being an obstacle, could be the very thing to bring them here.
Born and raised in Los Angeles, and a former Salt Lake City resident, Stephanie has made Italy her home for the past two decades. Her path began with the study of intergroup relations at Georgetown University and a career in journalism, both driven by the same curiosity about how people and places that rarely meet can come to understand one another. Wine turned out to be the most natural way to act on it.
Before Terrestoria, she spent six years leading worldwide communications and business development for Querciabella in Chianti Classico, where she still serves on the Advisory Board. That experience showed her how hard it is for family-run wineries to reach American drinkers, and convinced her that Utah could offer them a better path.
Since Terrestoria's first shipment arrived in 2017 (the Noelia Bebelia Albariño still found in Utah wine stores today), Stephanie has worked directly with every producer in the portfolio, favoring lesser-known regions, indigenous grapes, and organic farming, often from women-led estates. Each wine is imported direct, warehoused in Salt Lake City, and brought to Utah drinkers through state wine stores and the DABS special order program. From day one, Terrestoria's purpose has fit in three words: WINE FOR UTAH.
Along the way, Terrestoria has helped put Utah on the map for wine audiences far beyond the state, through coverage in VinePair, Monocle, and Wine Industry Advisor, the short documentary On the Fringes of Tierdom, and Masterclass Utah, a wine-centric event series hosted in Salt Lake City that drew attention well beyond it.
Stephanie and her husband, Roberto Lasorte, are also producers in their own right. At Lasorte Cuadra, in Puglia's Valle d'Itria, they work alongside generational farming families and the region's last traditional cellar cooperative to make wines like Silos, a field blend of rare Apulian grapes that reaches the United States primarily through Utah.
Importing to Utah, making wine in Puglia, and living in Chianti Classico have all been, in their own ways, about bringing unlikely partners to the same table. Enopolitik, an initiative devoted to citizen diplomacy over a shared glass, brings that journey full circle, back to the curiosity that set her on this path.
