“Aldo Lepore grew up in rural southern Italy, in a little village
outside Naples. He emigrated to America as a young man in the
1950s, and found something familiar and appealing about the wide open spaces of then relatively undeveloped Chili, where he and his wife Diana settled down. Aldo worked hard as a welder. Diana did the same at a local pasta factory. By 1964, they had saved enough to purchase a liquor store in Rochester’s South Wedge neighborhood, renaming it Lepore Liquors.
For three years, Diana took the bus from Chili into the city each
day to tend the store while Aldo continued welding work. Seeing the
population boom in Chili, they decided to move the store closer to
home, opening the Chili Liquor Store in Chili-Paul Plaza in 1967.
In time, they moved the store out of the plaza
and into its stand-alone shop on Chili Avenue.
In the mid-70s, Aldo added 1000 square feet to
the building—with his own hands! Another 1000
square feet were added to both the main and lower
levels in 1993. The last expansion, in 2017, added
another 5000 square feet up and down. The store
now covers nearly 20,000 square feet on two levels,
all stocked with wines and spirits from around
the world—especially Italian wines—and a
substantial variety of local ciders, wines, and
liqueurs as well.”
–Christine Corrado, North Chili Neighbors
