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Today was a long day
You know those days that you think will never end? Today was one of those days. I don’t know who the bigger sadist in this story is: The Austral Group for scheduling so many meetings in one day or the SSU Wine MBA program for requiring the MBA students to blog about every single item in our calendar. Nonetheless, it was obviously an incredibly informative day.
We started the day’s meetings with the export manager from Emiliana Winery. I honestly wish I had paid more attention during this meeting, but I think my body was still waking up or trying to conserve energy for later meetings. Anyways, Emiliana was started by Concha y Toro, which is one of Chile’s largest wine producers. Emilana’s goal is to become the most recognized in terms of sustainability; they don’t necessarily have to be the largest. Their reasons for pursuing organic and biodynamic practices are not as their main selling point. Those practices are still relatively new concepts in the market and could turn off or intimidate new customers prematurely. Their target market is the Millennial segment as Millennials will buy supposedly anything. Even though Millennials only make up 16% of the US market, they purchase 41% of imports. Also, Millennials buy 43% of wines over $20. Currently, Emiliana holds 1400 hectares of which 800 are certified as organic and biodynamic. They expect to be fully biodynamic by 2011. They are also certified as carbon neutral in regard to both production and shipping. They utilize Ecoglass which is made from 70% recycled glass and is lighter in weight, which benefits fuel consumption as well as worker fatigue. They are looking to use more screw caps, less foils on labels, and less plastic in general. One of the reasons they are so successful in implementing this campaign is because they make it a point to educate their workers to get behind what their mission is, or else why would they want to work with so much biodynamic manure?
Next we met up with one of the founding members of MOVI - Movimiento de Vinateros Independientes (http://www.movi.cl/), which was started in June 2009. Chile’s average winery size is probably the largest in the world, and thus it can be difficult for small wineries to get attention from the press and from consumers. MOVI was created in order to give these small wineries a better presence. For example, they participate together in fairs, which allow them to split promotional costs while still being able to showcase their wines. Combined, their total production is 30k cases with the largest member producing 10k cases. In order to join MOVI, the owner of the winery must be 100% involved in all aspects of the business, meaning there should be no departments. This is their main way of limiting the size of their members. Next, the owner must submit his wines for a committee tasting to ensure that he meets a certain level of quality. Currently MOVI has 17 members, and their next objective will probably deal with group organized logistics.
We next had another presentation by Wines of Chile which pretty much reiterated everything else everyone has told us, so I won’t bore you with that.
In the afternoon, we took a quick drive over to Cousiño Macul winery. This is Chile’s oldest family-owned winery that is still in business. The family started out in silver and mining, and they also helped establish railroads and telephone systems in Chile. I only paid attention to the Powerpoint lecture portion of the tour, as the walking tour was your usual stuff; however our tour guide was excellent, and we also randomly met him at a club in the city that night (next post will explain our crazy night). Our host explained the challenges the family met over the course of the winery’s life. The first two generations had a foundational challenge, as they did not know much in terms of the winegrowing or winemaking in the area. The next generation faced the Great Depression and anti-alcohol regulations. They could not export and had to sell domestically. In the 60s, Chile went through land reform under misunderstood political policies. The people enforcing the policy were to repurpose nonproductive land into land that was productive. The family almost lost their land a few times had it not been for the workers defending the land. During the 70s and 80s, many businesses found themselves with a “refounding challenge” as investment began to rise in Chile. In the 90s, there was a commercial challenge as the world became flooded with wine and domestic consumption declined. Now during the new millennium, there is a quality challenge. They recognize that quality starts in the vineyard. I didn’t buy any wine here, since you can find it in the states. I did however buy a couple cool vintage posters.
Our final meeting finally started around 6:15 PM, and I had absolutely no energy left. We had the opportunity to listen to Patricio Tapia talk to us about Chile’s wine. Once that man walked into the room, my ears involuntarily perked up. This man possesses such energy that draws¬¬ you in, it’s no wonder he writes a column for a newspaper, writes books, is starting his own magazine, and appears on TV. Tapia believes that Chile is the most successful wine country of the New World interms of quality and price. Their main goal is to convince people that they have the potential to create great wines because people believe Chile should only have value wines. However, Chile is conservative which could make change slow. AND that’s all I got before I zoned out again out of exhaustion.
You can read his blog at http://www.vinorama.cl (good luck non-Spanish readers) He is also working on an iPhone/BB app that will be able to scan bottle images and link to his wine guide. Mad props to AustralGroup for letting us meet all these cool people, but COME ON.. five in one day?!?!
