‘Wine Hunter’ Documentary About Riverside’s Russ Lorber Premieres Tonight on YouTube

Wine Hunter, a documentary following Riverside resident Russ Lorber’s journey into wine importing, will debut tonight at 7pm on YouTube. You can watch it here.

The film is directed, produced, and edited by Chrisa Giorgi.

Lorber started wine importing company Wide Roots in 2021. He came up with the idea for Wide Roots while sipping Chartreuse at Idle Hour. He worked for 25 years in the chemical manufacturing industry in operations and finance, but had been thinking about doing something entrepreneurial in the wine space for many years. Lorber loves to travel and said his richest experiences were his wine tours in Europe.

He accepted a buyout from his company in 2020, and decided it was the right time to start his business. Wide Roots, which has an office at Spaces in Stadium Square and a warehouse in Upper Marlboro, has a small portfolio of boutique Italian and Spanish wines it sells to restaurants and liquor stores around Maryland and in Washington, D.C.

Lorber met Baltimore-based Giorgi via Instagram while doing research and development on the wine importing industry. At the time Giorgi was producing In the Wine Dark Sea, a documentary about winemaking in Crete, Greece. The film debuted last year and is currently available on Amazon Prime.

Lorber was interested in a documentary telling the story of Italian winemaking, but Giorgi said she wanted to produce one instead about Lorber getting into the business.

Wine Hunter follows Lorber’s journey as he meets with winemakers in Italy and bar owners in Baltimore.

You can listen to Lorber on the South Baltimore Now Podcast here:

Winer Hunter Trailer 

About the Author: Kevin Lynch

Founder and Publisher of SouthBmore.com, longtime resident of South Baltimore, and a graduate of Towson University. Diehard Ravens and O's fan, father of three, amateur pizza chef, skateboarder, and "bar food" foodie. Email me at Kevin@InceptMM.com and follow me on Twitter at @SoBoKevin.