The Director General of the Tempus Alba Winery, a small family winery, spoke to Day to Day Wine of the possibilities that small wineries for export. He also told us about his experience on the future of exporting SMEs and what to do to enter this competitive market.
– How is made Tempus Alba
– It’s a family winery that is composed of my wife and our children, that together we integrate the directory, where we define the strategic policies of the company in the long term. Operational decisions and tasks that make the daily operations are resolved at the management level, whose positions are occupied by our children Mariano, Leonardo and Sibyl and a nephew, Jose Luis Biondolillo, which is the winemaker. All are part of the fourth generation of a family of Italian immigrants with almost 100 years of activity in the Mendoza wine industry. – What kind of wines are produced – The winery specializes in red wines produced premium and ultra premium to own grapes from three vineyards located in the departments of Maipú, Luján de Cuyo (Anchoris) and Tupungato. An important thing to note is that Tempus Alba enters only 5% of the total output of our vineyards, which allows us to be very selective when deciding which grapes produce and what is the optimal time to harvest them. Our premium wines are red varietals line (Malbec, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Syrah and Tempranillo). The ultra premium, or reserve, is a blend that line for the 2004 harvest on the market, is an assemblage of Malbec, Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot. 85% of production is exported and the remaining 15% to the domestic market. – How many years ago that are exporting – Only four years ago, but we’re already seeing some results of our work philosophy and makes us very happy to hear from our customers and consumers who perceive that our wines have their own personality and find the two worlds within each bottle. – How was the study done to start exporting – First we made a list of potential consumer countries. Then prioritize three criteria: First, the volumes currently imported, then the per capita consumption growth and finally the average CIF import prices actually paid for them. We opted for the third one and then analyze other variables of socio-economic, geographic and cultural nature, which were contrasted with the profile of Tempus Alba, took the strategic decision to focus on two or three countries and export primarily on the first stage to the United States. – What was the export strategy considering market size compared to the winery is small – The strategy we chose was to address this market in partnership with other wineries a profile similar to ours with a strong commitment to product quality. – What year began this experience and what the wineries that are associated are – started in 2004 and the present time the group is comprised of four wineries: Alto Cedro, Melipal, Tapestry and Tempus Alba. Both wineries as each of the wines were selected by the company Vinos del Sol, Inc., which is our sole importer for the USA, and offers all of the products marketed under the slogan, and the once registered trademark, The Best of Argentina. This is a creative way to link our wines with the country brand. – What is the advantage of working with one importer – The advantages of working in this way are many and undeniable: The importer has a very diversified portfolio of products that complement each other within a much broader price range , allowing it to offer its entire portfolio or individual products with the best quality / price ratio possible in each segment.
In turn, when working with a larger scale it is easier and cheaper logistics, reaching a volume of greater than I could handle each hold separate business.
While the advantages mentioned are very important, what is really crucial to the success of this proposal is to ensure the quality of the wines of all the participating wineries and this is crucial to involve and responsible directly to the importer monitoring. Thus, the importer not only acts as a commercial agent but as a referee who sets and enforces the rules of the business in the long term, exercising effective control of product quality and ensuring a high reputation for wines its portfolio in the market. – How each winery is handled with the importer – The mechanism that we adopt has the advantage of being very simple and pragmatic as each of the participating wineries independently maintained when negotiating annual quantities, prices and terms of sale. – What were the requirements to enter Vino del Sol, Inc. – The wineries should exhibit a high technological profile, great professionalism in their daily work, but mainly reflect a working philosophy and long-term oriented with a total identification with the quality. In addition, this quality should lead to a quality / price competitiveness furnish not only the winery but also of the whole. – What were the distribution channels they chose – We had to choose between working with a national dealer or various state distributors. The decision was marketed through a national distributor and its own network of regional distributors, which is the risk that each hold about could be sold (and then failing) is minimized and the importer is opening new regional retail spaces in an orderly and based on the responsiveness of each hold and set. – How do you see the future of the wine industry and SMEs have opportunities to compete – Beyond Argentinian wines can be fashionable in major importing countries, what is certain is that there is a reality that shows significant changes structural made the sector. Argentina now has a New Viticulture characterized by spectacular growth of global investment, marked by the varietal conversion of vineyards, the technological modernization of the cellars and a high capacity for business management, all in a context of greater pricing freedom and greater integration into the international market. From this new reality, Argentine wines began to have a growing presence and a high degree of recognition in the major markets of the world. The national wine industry was able to show the high quality of its Malbec wines and particularly that for a long time will remain the signature wine of Argentina. There is no doubt that the future of the industry will be leveraged for greater participation in the export business worldwide and is for this reason that all promotional efforts should be aimed at strengthening the country brand and support of private initiative macroeconomic and sectoral policy that does not undermine the competitiveness of the sector and enable sustainable development of the long-term. It is undeniable that in recent years we are seeing a greater concentration of production and commercial activity, there is strong evidence for expansion of supply, with the aggravating circumstance that is not native grape varietals but that the lack of vertical integration of small and medium vintners still pending and that the wine has virtually SME access to credit and the availability of rural labor (and unfair competition exerted on it by the state social policy ) is now a more important constraint that the resource water. – Do you think in this context it will be more difficult to export for small and medium wineries Cree – Sure, this is because, on the one hand have greater difficulty in accessing the domestic and foreign markets and secondly, because of scale problems they are much more exposed to increased costs, as inflation is real and it is estimated that so far this year the dry materials in general have increased between 15 and 20%. In much the State, it is important to redefine its role in the future of the wine policy makers do not make the same mistakes of the past, mostly attributable to excessive state intervention at national and provincial level. Consequently, the best contribution I could make the sector is with absolute precision demarcate those areas that the state should never meddle, capitalizing the accumulated mistakes of the past. – What do you think would have to SMEs to compete and to export – My recommendation is to differentiate its production, that are committed to quality, focus their export efforts on one or a few markets, and working with strategic partners such as the Fund transformation and Growth, and FONTAR ProMendoza Foundation. In this sense, what we continue prioritizing Tempus Alba is the quality as an element of market differentiation and permanent improvement of the quality / price of our wines. Continue our research and development program to 20 years consistent view in the identification, selection and multiplication of clones of malbec and intensify cooperation activities among colleagues in compliance with one of the premises of our Dogma: Cooperating to compete. Source: Wine Area
