Sicily to Dallas: CLINQ ZERO Saw the Gap in the Wine Industry Pt. 1

Most people who launch a non-alcoholic wine brand come at it from the wellness world, the beverage startup world, or the "I gave up drinking and couldn't find anything good" world. Anto Li Brizzi came at it from none of those places.

He came at it from the winery floor. As head of North America for an Italian capital equipment company, Anto spent years selling the machinery that wineries use to make wine. He understood the production process, the industry dynamics, and the category from the inside out. When he saw the opportunity to build a better non-alcoholic sparkling wine — one that starts as real wine and is gently dealcoholized rather than constructed from juice, sugar, and flavoring — he had the knowledge and the credibility to do it right.

In this first episode, Forrest traces Anto's full origin story:

• Growing up in Sicily in a family defined by bread, bakeries, and the rhythms of Italian outdoor life
• Studying aerospace engineering — bachelor's and master's degrees — before pivoting to the corporate world
• A career path that took him from Fiat to agriculture to Tetra Pak and eventually to a front-row seat in the wine industry
• The move to the US eleven years ago, becoming an American citizen, and making Dallas home while still traveling back to Italy multiple times a year
• And the founding insight behind CLINQ ZERO: real sparkling wine, gently dealcoholized — not grape juice with bubbles, not a drink rebuilt with additives, but something that starts exactly where great wine starts.

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