Florencia Palmaz

General Info

About

Florencia Palmaz was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1975 and raised in California and Texas. She studied biology at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas, fully expecting to follow her father’s footsteps into a career in medicine. Fueled by a passion for food and family, it was during college in 1996 that she became an entrepreneur instead, partnering with her mother in a boutique food distribution company and in 1998 purchased the facility they use to this day. The initial business featured locally sourced meat and poultry and grew to include a catering division. Over time the business evolved into foodservice manufacturing and a gourmet foods catalog. On the foodservice side, the company expanded into offering high-end steaks and specialty cuts of chicken and duck in 2000 and provided a premium industrial kitchen preparing products for the deli hot bars of for high-end supermarkets such as Wegman's and HEB in 2002, which is when the name officially changed to GoodHeart Brand Specialty Foods Co. Customers for the catalog business included the Neiman Marcus holiday catalog, Dean & DeLuca, and 1-800 flowers. In 2011 the company began high pressure pasteurizing their products to fit with the clean ingredient labeling and in 2016 the company celebrated 20 years in business with the launch of a retail brand. In 2003 she moved from San Antonio to Napa Valley, to help launch Palmaz Vineyards, serving as President until 2014. As President she helped to determine the style of wines produced and developed the Palmaz brand, marketing and sales strategy. She balanced impeccable hospitality with her talents for both the technical and artistic side of winemaking. Her Argentinian heritage and lifestyle, revolving around family, food and wine, led her to launch one of the first curated food and wine pairing experiences in Napa Valley. The signature Palmaz tour and tasting consists of a tour of the futuristic gravity flow wine making cave, followed by a formal tasting of the Palmaz portfolio of wines with hors d' oeuvres created from her own recipes, designed to complement each wine. Building on the success of the tour and tasting program, she established the Brasas food and wine society in 2012 to share her family’s unique wine country way of life on an even deeper level. Always looking for ways to expand the brand and the Palmaz experience, she captured the essence of over a decade of cooking and entertaining guests at the winery in a cookbook, PALMAZ VINEYARDS: At the Table and Around the Fire, published in 2015. Part of a landmark set of books about Palmaz, it includes all 130 dishes served at tastings, Argentinian style barbecues and even from formal wine pairing dinners where everyone from doctors to diplomats have enjoyed her family’s hospitality. Today she plays two roles, as President of GoodHeart a speciality foods company, which produces high quality all-natural prepared meats, with both retail and food service operations, and as Director of Marketing at Palmaz Vineyards. She divides her time between Napa, California where she lives on the family vineyard and San Antonio, Texas where GoodHeart is headquartered. As always, she is happiest with friends and family around the table, sailing, and of course crafting and enjoying fine food and wine.

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