Todd Baltich
Local Vintner: Leary’s Fine Wine and Spirits
by Kathleen Downey
Todd Baltich
Todd Baltich, proprietor of Leary’s Fine Wine and Spirits, has experienced some rather unusual life-defining moments. These moments include being robbed by an inebriated group of military police officers, being threatened at knifepoint by a tribe of orange-haired pygmies (in unstaged timing, the pygmy event occurred immediately after Baltich’s run-in with the ragtag law), and coming face-to-face with mountain gorillas. The aforementioned events occurred while Baltich was a Peace Corps volunteer stationed in Rwanda during the late 1980s. Baltich’s philosophy to “Experience all that life has to offer” may well have begun during this memorable period of his life.
“Serving in the Peace Corps was the greatest adventure I ever had,” says Baltich. The international business major (Baltich is a graduate of Northeastern University) had a directive to help locals establish a small business of which they, in turn, would assume ownership. So Baltich applied his newly minted skills by helping Rwandan villagers create an artisan cooperative where they could sell their sculptures, carvings, and other artistic wares. His friendship with the sister of Rwanda’s president didn’t hurt his effort. The young woman spoke with her brother on Baltich’s behalf, a great courtesy that helped Baltich secure a grant, acquire a parcel of land, and build a store in the bush country.
He remembers his initial effort to turn over the established cooperative to the villagers as a tough-sell. “I instructed them to elect a president,” He received a confused and unsure response. “They kept telling me that I had to choose, and I kept repeating that ‘No,’ this was their decision.” Then, Baltich said, it dawned on him that the villagers had never before been permitted to freely vote. They may have voted in political elections, Baltich said, but their votes were often cast under intimidation and coercion. If they did didn’t vote as expected, they might face grim repercussions. However, democracy ultimately persevered for the artisan cooperative, and the villagers took ownership of their business.
“The cooperative catered mostly to tourists who had come to Rwanda to see the mountain gorillas,” says Baltich. He describes his own experiences with seeing the gorillas as “amazing.”
A friend of Baltich’s had been a volunteer for the Mountain Gorilla Project, a conservation initiative created to protect these endangered great apes. (Today, only 600 mountain gorillas remain after their populations have been impacted by civil war, genocide, habitat destruction, and poaching. Baltich visibly cringes when he talks about how gorillas had been killed for the purpose of making ashtrays out of their gentle hands.) With his friend as his personal guide, Baltich recalls “blazing a trail through the rainforest with machetes” in order to reach the elusive mountain-dwellers, high in the Virunga mountain range. “They are the most docile, gentle creatures,” he says of the gorillas. “They don’t attack humans.”
Baltich left the Peace Corps and Rwanda in 1990. He notes that his arrival in Rwanda had come six months after the famed primatologist Dian Fossey was murdered there (he had the good fortune, however, to meet Jane Goodall). His departure came six months prior to Rwanda erupting in civil war.
Ready for more life-defining moments, Baltich purchased a round-the-world ticket. After traveling throughout Africa and Asia for a year, he made a “pit stop” to his family home in New York, and then headed off to France where he says he polished his French language skills. (Baltich interjects that when he was robbed in Rwanda by the military police, he was ordered to give up his money in French.)
Traveling had become a passion for Baltich. The most rewarding aspect of traveling to new lands, he asserts, is meeting the people who live there and experiencing their cultures. By the time he was 28, Baltich had visited 50 countries.
A life-defining moment on a personal level came when Baltich met his future wife, Leyla, an Australian living in London. Baltich was stationed in London working for a high tech company in international sales. But when the technology bubble burst, Baltich’s company closed its international offices. He was given the option of relocating to the company’s Woburn office. Baltich convinced Leyla to accompany him, promising that she could choose where they ended up living, so long as he was able to commute to his job in Woburn.
Several years later, happily settled in Newburyport, Baltich shares another life-defining moment—one tinged with serendipity. He recalls the day he walked into Leary’s and bumped into his roommate from college, Harry Zarkades, who was then the store’s wine manager. The two reconnected over conversation and drinks that evening, and Zarkades shared with Baltich that Leary’s was for sale.
“It may have been a bit of a leap,” Baltich says, “but I made the decision to buy the store.” With a passion for wine (refined from his travels to vineyards throughout Spain, Italy, France, and Germany) and some knowledge of the business (Baltich reveals that he worked for a wine distributor for one year, prior to joining the Peace Corps), Baltich left his high tech job and purchased Leary’s in 2005.
“Owning Leary’s, one of the oldest purveyors of wine and spirits in New England, has been a great experience,” Baltich states. He delights in relating the store’s rich history as a Newburyport institution, from its founding by Cornelius Leary in 1897. Explaining Leary’s continued success, Baltich says, “I always try to keep different from other businesses.” The store’s wine, spirits, and craft beer education classes (held in a classroom annex built exclusively for this purpose), weekly Saturday wine tastings, and the popular and well-attended twice-yearly wine tastings when multiple wine vendors each bring several types of wines have earned the store multiple awards, including Best of the North Shore and Readers’ Choice Awards.
“Leary’s is very community-focused,” states Baltich. In addition to supporting “dozens of greater-Newburyport nonprofits,” Leary’s sponsors the city’s annual Yankee Homecoming celebration and the yearly fundraiser for Anna Jaques Hospital.
Baltich credits his father with inspiring him. “My father taught me to always take the high road,” he says. Baltich couldn’t have predicted that one of these high roads would have been a steep mountain climb to see endangered mountain gorillas. But he says that the core principles that his father taught him inspired him to attempt such challenges that he never would have thought of attempting otherwise.
Now the father of two young boys, Baltich wishes to inspire his sons the way his father inspired him. And, Baltich says, when his children are older, he plans to bring them to Rwanda—so that they, too, can meet the mountain gorillas and feel the awe that Baltich experienced as a young Peace Corps volunteer.
Kathleen Downey is the Features Editor for Newburyport Today. If you are a townie or a citizen who would like to be profiled (or to suggest someone to profile)—or if you have a local story idea, please email: Kathleen@Newburyport-Today.com.
