An American In Malbec Country

Several very interesting points about the story of Daniel Karlin, a true Angeleno who found love and an amazing business opportunity in Mendoza, and it is now reaping the benefits of a trial and error strategy.
What do people like Nicolás Catena, Santiago Achával, Bernardo Weinert, Paul Hobbs, and many more have in common with Daniel's story? VISION.
From Alternative Latin Investor (free subscription required):

"The original impetus for the business came from a simple observation that tourists to Argentina fell in love with Malbec and Torrontés—the quintessentially Argentine varieties—just like Karlin did when he arrived. The problem was that they had virtually no way of getting more of these rare gems in the U.S."

He basically created "Anuva Wines" a US based Wine Club of Argentinian Wines, and clearing all the hurdles and bureaucracy took a major dose of patience and personal drive.

"“We spent a lot of money on lawyers to be able to understand how to ship wine to people,” Karlin says with a smile. The alcoholic beverage industry in the U.S. is highly regulated. In addition to Anuva’s shipping service to clients and wine club members across the U.S., they have the only wine-tasting service for tourists in Buenos Aires. Anuva also offers in-home wine tastings in select cities in the U.S."

The article goes then into one of the major reasons of why argentinian wines are enjoying so much success even amidst these challenging times:

More below the fold. Click here.

"With a lower average cost per liter than any other major wine-producing country in the world, Argentina is growing by leaps and bounds. Not only have they increased their market share of imported wines by 400% over the last 10 years, surpassing Chile to become the number 4 imported wine by country (behind France, Italy and Australia), but they were the only country besides Chile to grow in both dollar value and in volume when comparing the data of 1st Semester 2009 to 1st Semester 2008. Argentina’s imports to the U.S. grew over 30% in both volume and dollar value. The only other country to come close to those values was Chile, while every other country’s imports to the U.S. have fallen dramatically. France is down 27% in value and 11% in volume, Italy 20% and 7%, Australia 5% in value, and Spain, South Africa, New Zealand and other minor regions are all down as well."

And what are the problems and headaches of doing business in a country like Argentina?

Karlin says barriers to market entry include proficiency in Spanish, the cultural gap, wineries without websites, wineries with websites but with incorrect contact information, corruption and dishonesty, stolen domestic shipments in Argentina, poor understanding of label regulations, brettanomyces (a bacteria found in older wineries creating a “barnyard” aroma and flavor—a big problem for some Argentine wineries) contamination, the ins and outs of international shipping of controlled substances and U.S. import law and logistics issues.

A well written article. Don't miss it.