Cru Privé

Wine importer & distributor specializing in the finest Italian wine produced by unique, limited production, boutique wineries.

Cru Prive Ltd is a wine importer and distributor based in the UK, specializing on Italian fine wines. Our mission is to source fine wines from around Italy which are currently unavailable or rare in the UK and offer them to a wider market. We want to offer a unique and exclusive experience to our customers where quality, value and personal touch in delivering service, are our main goals.

Our focus is on fine wines, small production & boutique wineries that we want to offer to our selected clients, including top restaurants, wine bar and wholesalers, as well as the individual wine enthusiast and connoisseur. Our selection will provide some of the most well known Italian wines such as Barolo alongside some wine less well known, made with unique indigenous grapes.

Interest in Italian wine is growing rapidly in the UK and to capitalize on this trend we aim to share our wine knowledge and let our consumer get to know some of the rarest indigenous grapes. We provide wine education and staff training to our clients to improve their knowledge, preparing them to sell our products to their customers. We also organize events and wine tasting for our clients.

Cru Prive was founded by Elena Gargani, an Italian Certified Sommelier. She began exploring wine and wine tasting as a personal interest several years ago, and it became her passion and later her profession. She received her sommelier training and diploma at Associazione Italiana Sommelier (AIS) in Rome.

While participating to numerous wine-tasting workshops all around the world, she improved her knowledge about the world of wines, and in particular about the unique and exclusive Italian production. She lived in New York, where she worked for food, wine and spirits PR agency, Colangelo PR, as account coordinator and wine specialist, organizing wine events and coordinating media relations for the most important Italian wine brands, such as Marchesi de’ Frescobaldi, Arnaldo Caprai and Consorzio Tutela dei vini di Montefalco. After years working in Rome, New York and Malta, Elena moved to the UK to put all her passion and experience in fine wine into new venture Cru Prive.