Sam Chou - Chile 2010

15th January 2010

Post with 2 notes

3rd day – Pisco, WinesofChile, VinNova

In our morning meeting, we met with the export manager from Capel, Chile’s top Pisco producer, who gave us an introduction to Chile’s premier liquor spirit. Pisco is a distilled spirit made from mostly Muscat grapes. Varietals include Pink muscat, Muscat of Alexandria, Muscat of Austria, Torrontes, and Pedro Jimenez. Vineyards are located in Northern Chile where there are extreme temperatures. The vines are trained on arbor systems, and regulations stipulate that Pisco must be made in the region that it is grown. Distillation for the current vintage must also be completed by January 31^st so that there is no overlap between vintages. The production process is similar to that of white wine, except prior to aging, the wine is distilled, then watered down to the desired alcohol level. The final product is a clear liquid that possesses incredible aromas. Pisco that is aged in wooden casks (usu. 2 years) will develop a golden tint. Currently, Capel is beginning to ramp up efforts to market in the U.S. They already have a deal in the works with Costco to sell their premixed Mango Pisco Cocktail.

We next took a quick walk over to the W Hotel to attend the 7^th Annual Wines of Chile Awards Seminar. A panel of Canadian wine celebrities was giving speeches pertaining to the state of Chile’s position in the Canadian marketplace and suggestions for improvement. The general consensus is that Chile is not well known enough yet, and they need to develop a better selling point other than good quality, good value wines. Also, since most of the panel consisted of journalists, they highly encouraged producers to spoil wine writers as they passed through. Nick Hamilton suggested that Chile design wines catered to Old World palates in order to get their foot in the door, then introduce their own styles. Sid Cross is adamant that Chile needs to grow more Pinot. Most of it was basic Marketing 101, where they told Chilean producers they need to find their unique selling point. In my opinion, the highlight of that event was the fire alarm going off forcing everyone to evacuate.

The most informative meeting in my opinion was at Vinnova. I went in expecting to be barraged by research projects and statistics, but instead we had a very ad hoc Q&A session. Vinnova was created to merge wineries with universities. Vinnova’s responsibilities include: identifying the needs for innovation within the industry, conduct and manage research by research teams in conjunction with winery execs, publicize results and help industry adopt, and commercialize the results. Since 2006, they have already begun 24 R&D projects in areas such as consumer preferences, viticulture management, maturation and enology, and management and technological transfer. Wineries are encouraged to participate in trials as they are the first ones to receive the results, they keep the materials, and the results apply directly to them. The organization is 60-75% government sponsored and 40-25% funded by user based fees. Research in Chile is relatively cheap; a 5 year project is estimated to cost $400k. It is expected that funding will double next year, however they do not have enough researchers to allocate the money to. (Too bad, I’m in an MBA program)  Some interesting results they have found might dispel myths regarding dropping fruit and canopy management.

Today was an OK day.