Beyond Pisco: Pairing World-Class Peruvian Gastronomy with Valtierro’s Daniel Valverde
Born into a poor family in Peru as the youngest of five children, Daniel Valverde’s path to winemaking began far from the vineyard. At nineteen, without a college degree, he followed his older siblings to the United States and took a job busing tables on weekends in New Jersey while juggling shifts at a local supermarket. Grinding his way across restaurant floors, he eventually made the leap to New York City to work at the historic steakhouse The Palm, rising through the ranks from server to floor manager, beverage manager, and eventually sales manager. It was there that he met fellow server Max, sparking a late-night pact to one day make wine together in Peru. Driven by an entrepreneurial streak forged in the US, Daniel later stepped away from the corporate dining world, survived a battle with thyroid cancer, and relocated to Puerto Rico on an impulse in 2021. There, he founded Green Rose Cleaners—scaling it from a solo hustle into the island’s highest-rated commercial and residential cleaning service. That venture provided the operational freedom to return home to Peru and finally fulfill his promise: founding Valtierro to prove that Peru’s heritage grapes belong on the world’s finest dining tables.
Long before Valtierro existed, Daniel and his coworker Max made an offhand promise over shift drinks in Manhattan that they would one day make wine together. Daniel walks through the forgotten history that fueled that dream: how Peru actually produced wine before Chile and Argentina in the 1500s, why Spanish Crown tariffs and natural disasters crushed the industry, and the exact phone call a decade later that convinced Max to hop on a plane to Ica.
Instead of raising millions to buy real estate, Daniel hit the road and scouted bodegas across southern Peru, landing in the high-desert valley of Tacna right on the Chilean border. He explains the art of tenant winemaking—how he convinced an independent, multigenerational grape farmer to sell him two tons of fruit and rent out cellar space so they could vinify on their own terms.
Valtierro Website: https://www.valtierro.com/
Valtierro Instagram: @valtierrowine
Episode Timestamps & Chapters
00:00 – Intro: Welcome Daniel Valverde to Fell Into Food
00:23 – Leaving Peru at 19: Busing tables and rising through NYC dining rooms
01:40 – The 15-year pact with sommelier Max at The Palm
02:20 – The lost history: Why Peru made wine before Chile and Argentina
03:53 – Ground zero: Scouting Ica and sending the text that started Valtierro
05:41 – The entrepreneurial mindset, early failures, and launching Green Rose Cleaners
12:44 – Arriving in Tacna: Renting tanks and partnering with a generational grower
14:55 – Bringing in 40 years of Argentine winemaking expertise
15:36 – The Malbec of Peru? Why bet on Negra Criolla
17:26 – Overcoming the Pisco legacy and leaning into fine dining momentum
19:50 – The NYC restaurant story: Confronting the domestic wine stigma
21:38 – The go-to-market: 1,500 bottles, allocation math, and scaling up
24:20 – Direct-to-consumer club plans vs. retail placement
25:09 – Rejecting tourist kitsch: Burgundy glass, clean labels, and wax stamps
26:15 – Cellar details: 50% whole-cluster, manual picking, and nitrogen bottling
28:44 – Pairing wine with Peruvian cuisine: What to ask your server
30:00 – Full circle: What the 19-year-old busboy would say today
31:05 – Where to find Valtierro and closing thoughts
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