Todd’s passion for Italian food and wine began at age five, when he was frequently spotted on the shoulders of European chefs returning him to the dining room after kitchen “inspections.” That early obsession was no fluke — his parents fed it with a stint at Nathalie Dupree’s cooking school and a course in Chinese cuisine — but it was a high school summer in Italy with The Experiment in International Living that cemented it. Living with an Italian family he remains close to today, Todd came home certain that Italian food and wine would be his life’s work.

That conviction led him to Cornell University’s School of Hotel Administration. A semester abroad in Florence — much of it spent in the city’s enoteche, notepad and nitrogen winesaver in hand, tasting daily alongside the cellar master at Enoteca Alessi — crystallized the specific career he wanted. After Cornell, he launched into the trade with Italian fine wine importer Winebow, working alongside Leonardo LoCascio, and later joined Sherry-Lehmann in New York, where he became the store’s Italian wine go-to.

He then spent five months driving a maroon Fiat Uno from one end of Italy to the other, tasting and sharing meals with the country’s top wine growers, trying to understand what separates the great producers from the merely good. That journey produced relationships rather than a book — several of those growers wanted to export to the U.S. — and inspired him to found Liquid Brands, an Italian wine import company based in Atlanta.

Today Todd is based in San Diego, where he publishes Vendemmia and writes The Score, the only 100-point Italian wine archive built for the American consumer. He holds the Italian Wine Professional (IWP) certification and has been recognized for his Italian wine expertise by Fortune, CNN, USA Today, and Black Enterprise. His work has taken him down every major highway and many a gravel road through every wine region in Italy.

In his scarce free time, he plays “at golf,” watches Formula 1, practices yoga, marvels at the price of local real estate, and searches for the perfect margarita.