At his communications consulting firm’s 8th floor M Street headquarters, the staff jokingly refers to Peter Schechter as ‘the international man of mystery.’ He speaks six languages fluently. He is an advisor to heads of state and CEO’s and friends from all over the world and from all walks of life, who call with unintelligible accents. Schechter is a restauranteur. He is a farmer. He is a winemaker. He is an author. A resident of Georgetown, he is also the husband of Rosa, his vivacious Spanish wife and the father of their two daughters, Alia and Marina.
After a decade on Capitol Hill and with the Sawyer Miller Group, a New York consulting firm, Schechter made his name professionally by joining Bob Chlopak and Charlie Leonard, both former colleagues, as the founding partners of Chlopak, Leonard, Schechter and Associates (CLS). Since 1992, CLS has managed to keep itself under wraps as one of the city’s best kept secrets.
The one exception was the Wall Street Journal’s reference to CLS as “Washington’s bare-knuckled communications firm.” CLS’s 45-person roster advises politicians, foreign companies, corporations in trouble and organizations that want to change the political dynamic in our country.
He has served as principal election advisor in nearly every country in Latin America. This includes work for President Alvaro Uribe (his fourth Presidential client in Colombia), President Fernando Henrique Cardoso in Brazil, and President Ernesto Zedillo in Mexico. He represents many of Europe’s finest wine-producing regions – Champagne, Port and Sherry – to seek out protection for their place names, which are infringed upon in the US.
CLS has worked with some of the world’s best known names in some of their best known fights: Oracle’s battle with Microsoft; Verizon’s entry into broadband; The United Nations initiative to convince America to pay its billions in arrearages, and The Pew Charitable Trusts fight to create stricter auto emissions standards. Furthermore, with Spanish as one of his languages, he is a frequent a political commentator for Univision and Telemundo, the nation’s two largest Spanish language television networks.
What raises some eyebrows is Schechter’s varied beyond-work activities as he is a serious Virginia farmer, a co-owner and board member of five of Washington’s most successful restaurants, a proprietor of an up and coming, award-winning winery in Israel, and an author with one reviewer-acclaimed novel, Point of Entry, under his belt and another one on its way to the bookshelves in March 2009.
Peter the Author
Rounding out his “renaissance man” persona, Schechter published his first novel, Point of Entry, in 2006. It addresses the moral dilemma of a beautiful Colombian woman president when she discovers that Middle Eastern terrorists have decided to use Colombian drug routes to smuggle weapons of mass destruction to the United States. Does she dare tell the American authorities and risk a US invasion or does she keep quiet and become complicit in an attack against a friendly country?
The Washington Post called it “fast moving” and “thoroughly entertaining.” The Chicago Tribune said it is “as good as this kind of writing gets.” The St. Louis Post Dispatch said the plot is “why-didn’t I think-of-that-clever.” Newsweek called it “a rip-roaring novel about terrorism, nuclear plots and presidential dating.” The Boston Globe declared it “entertaining.” His second book, Pipeline, will be published in early 2009.
Peter's Muddy Run Farm
At Muddy Run Farm in Culpeper, Virginia, Peter and Rosa have one of central Virginia’s oldest, sustainable Spanish goat operations. With approximately 20 acres of pasture and the same in hay production, the working farm is shared with three llamas and three even-cuter donkeys, which are family pets and formally earn their keep as guard animals to the Muddy Run’s 75 goats. Muddy Run Farm supplies breeding stock of Spanish goats, a taller and square-framed breed, to numerous farms seeking to expand their offering by raising goats. The American Livestock Breeds Conservancy has listed Spanish goats on their ‘watch’ list, making the animals a conservancy priority in the United States.
Muddy Run Farm supplies prestigious Washington restaurants – such as the elegant Taberna del Alabardero -- with goat meat for customers’ delight. They have even hosted forty Virginia agricultural extension agents at the farm in an all-day seminar on goat husbandry. Peter and Rosa tackle all the veterinary procedures, livestock management, fencing, and husbandry matters on their own along with their two daughters, who help with the goats’ care, while keeping the birth and naming records up to date as the farm has no farm manager or full-time help.
Peter's Restaurants
Peter is also one of the founding owners of the celebrity chef, José Andrés’ DC food kingdom. The restaurant venture was born during Schechter’s SAIS graduate studies at John Hopkins in the Georgetown home he shared with fellow SAIS student, Robert Alvarez, who is presently the Dominican Ambassador to the OAS.
Peter joined Roberto, Rob Wilder and José Andrés as one of the first investors in the downtown Jaleo, which opened in April 1993; at the time, it seemed wild to bet on a Spanish small-plates restaurant to open in a desolate neighborhood. The rest is history and today the group owns and operates three Jaleos, Zaytinya and Oyamel. Schechter has served for nearly six years, with DC banker Robert Pincus, as the outside director on the restaurants’ Board of Directors. The restaurants are proof that great food, good management and careful oversight are a winning combination even in the competitive food business.
Peter's Winery
Beyond the restaurants, Rosa and Peter are the co-proprietors of Agur Winery in Israel. Situated next to Bet Shemesh in the beautiful Judean Hills between Tel-Aviv and Jerusalem, the area is designated by the Jewish Federation of Greater as Washington’s sister city. Shuki Yashuv, Agur’s winemaker, is Peter’s talented cousin. They have grown Agur in the past ten years from a garage winery into a blossoming, exporting winery with Gold and Silver Medals from prestigious wine competitions in Spain, USA, Argentina, Colombia, Panama and Israel.
For decades, Israeli wine was a sweet, sacramental wine used mostly for religious ceremonies. Similar to the wager of opening a restaurant in a previously-bleak downtown Washington area, Peter and Rosa were confident that the world would soon recognize the quality explosion of Israeli wines. The Judean Hills wineries are at the center of the new quality revolution in Israel, and Agur’s 18,000 bottles a year product is being recognized in competitions and by prestigious wine writers.