New Website (and blog site...)

After months of hard work we are happy to say that we have a new website! It is the same address, www.elementalimporters.com, and through it we will be posting all of our new blog entries. If you already have this page on an RSS subscription, you can go to the new blog page and sign up for our latest entries.

Our new site has stories about the wineries, photos, all the information you need about the wines, and any new stuff that is in the works. Enjoy and let us know what you think!

The Earth Friendly Distributor

This blog entry is the second in a series dedicated to telling the stories of our distributors. We greatly value our partners, and are honored to work with such a strong network of brave entrepreneurs.

Unity Selections, Denver, CO: Andy Lum’s mission is very similar to our own. He distributes wine that is biodynamic, organic or made with sustainability in mind. In 2007 Andy began his company after working for Grand Vin, a distributor in Colorado. Curious to learn more about Andy’s background, I googled “Grand Vin Colorado”. What I discovered is that Gran Vin is now part of the second largest distributor in the US, Republic National Distributing. While I’m not certain of this, I’m curious if the take over of Gran Vin by this distributing mega-house contributed to Andy’s following comments on the consolidation of the wine trade:

“The wine industry, like other businesses, has experienced progressive consolidation in all its tiers of distribution (producer, wholesaler and retailer/restaurant). These consolidation forces threaten to standardize wine quality and diminish the scope of alternative consumer choice.”

Ryan and I are impressed by Andy and the thoughtful way he runs his company. His work is most certainly increasing “the scope of alternative consumer choice” by offering delicious earth-friendly wines.

A Family of Entrepreneurs

Wine passes through many hands (as mandated by the United State government) as it makes its way from the winery to your table. Luckily, the importer is in a unique position to guide where the wine goes as it passes down the global supply chain. So we try to choose partners that have our same beliefs. Our wineries have incredible stories and we celebrate them at length on our new website, but I want you to know a little about the other incredible partners we work with. Over the next few blogs, I will tell you about one such set of partners: our distributors. Each one has a unique story and all are owned by brave entrepreneurs. Today I want to celebrate the first distributor that took a chance on Elemental Importers’ wine.

American Northwest, Seattle, WA: Owned and operated by Oleg Fedechkin, his wife Rina, and son Anton. Emigrating from Russia when Anton was just a child, the Fedechkin family took many twists and turns before finally settling in Seattle. Along their journey they lived many years in Spain. There they grew a love and passion for Spanish wines and culture. They brought this knowledge and passion to Seattle where with no real connections in the community and limited English skills, this brave family began importing and self distributing their beloved Spanish wine. Over the years their company has grown to be a respected supplier of wine, beer and sake from across the United State and the world. Spanish wines? Of course. But their global collection spans from California to Argentina to Italy to Israel and to Japan.

The Joy of Doing Good Business

Ryan and I just launched a new website, and in the process we rewrote our "About Us" section. This was a lot harder to write than I thought it would be because it forced us to narrow in on what we valued and why we do what we do. It is easy to be passionate about many different things in this business (the wine! the food! the travel!), but we wanted to get at the core of it all. Of course we love wine. But what else?

We sat down around our kitchen table to discuss. After kicking around some ideas, we gravitated to one common theme: doing business the right way. Recently we've all seen how businesses driven by greed can harm our environment, their business partners, and their own customers. Frankly, because of their poor examples, business hasn’t been looking so hot. However, Ryan and I love entrepreneurship. How do we reconcile this? We realized that our passion comes from working with and supporting strong, successful, family-owned businesses that are a blessing to their communities. Our greatest joy is in visiting our wineries and seeing firsthand how they treat the environment with respect and bring honorable employment to their neighbors – while making great profits. And their example encourages us to do the same. We believe that by doing business right, entrepreneurs can and do change the world for the better.

So this is our promise (and our passion) as written in our “About Us”.

Being a family business, they only import wines from family-owned wineries. Ashley and Ryan personally visit each and every producer to guarantee that they respect and care for their workers and for their land with sustainable, often organic, environmental practices. They then work hard to instill these same values throughout their entire global supply chain.

P.S. Here is a shout out to all those large corporations that are doing business right. They do exist, and our world is better because of them. Let’s raise a glass to business with ethics!

The Winter White Wine Challenge

Ryan and I are off to Pike Place Market to purchase the ingredients of our Elemental Winter White Wine Challenge. At tasting and dinner parties many wine drinkers seem to believe that red wine is the only option during the cold winter months, and that white wine is only for hot days in a shaded patio. We are going to put this myth to the test by trying to pair our Argentinean whites with the hearty food of the season: wild rice, mushrooms, and rich cheeses. In the next series of blog entries, I will report on the hours we spend at the farmers market, in the kitchen, and at the dinner table trying to build the perfect winter white wine feast. It's a new decade! Let's break the old myths!

Intrepid Importer Explorers

Birthed from the end of the prohibition against alcohol in the 1920s, the United States alcohol distribution laws force at least 2 and more commonly 3 middlemen between winery and wine drinker (unless you purchase from a tasting room, of course). Called the Three Tiered System, the international wine you purchase at a grocery store passes from a winery to an importer (who brings it across the border), from the importer to a distributor (who manage the in-country shipping trucks), from the distributor to a retailer (Safeway, Trader Joes, etc.), and finally from the retailer to your table. It functions a bit differently in each state, but this tiered system has many functions. First, it prevents large monopolies by forcing the product to move through many hands. Second, it keeps consumption low by keeping costs high (each middleman takes a cut). Third, it generates a lot of tax revenue (a bottle of wine is taxed at each level).

In the global supply chain, Ryan and I are the importers. When we decided to enter this industry we considered going into business at each of the levels. Being the wine maker has always been a dream. The margins are arguably the best for the distributor. And wine shop owners have the joy of talking with and educating the wine drinkers. So why be the importer? The answer to this question arguably says more about Ryan and I than anything else. Our top 3 reasons are:

1. Importers are the intrepid explorers. Finding new wine to introduce to the US market is actually a lot harder than you’d think – especially when you want to do it right. It takes an extremely outgoing personality to make connections with people on the ground. It takes a savvy traveler to navigate in hard to reach corners of the world, communicate with people who don’t speak much English, and look cool and confident while doing it. It takes learning to say no while still being open to saying yes when the right wine comes along – in multiple different languages. But of course, for Ryan and me…this is the fun part.
2. Importers manage fewer but deeper and more complicated relationships. Distributors will at any given time have hundreds and hundreds of customers because each one only purchases small amounts of wine. An importers’ customer is the distributor, and generally you have 1 or 2 per state. At the most, an importer will have only 100 customers. What this means is that you have the time and the responsibility to get to know your customers well. They are deeper relationships that we try to build on trust and mutually beneficial transactions. In our personal lives, Ryan and I like to nurture these kinds of friendships, so it made sense that we did this in our business.
3. Importers are wine marketers – not necessarily wine salesmen. Yes we sell wine, but we focus on creating a comprehensive marketing campaign for each wine that includes a lot more than simply being salesmen. From garnering press to crafting a story that resonates with customers, we help build the image of the brand. I enjoy this because it requires creativity, and I believe creativity feeds the soul.

Ryan Does Denver

This last week I had an opportunity to fly to Denver to work with our great distributor down there, Unity Selections. I was going to tour the area with some of the sales reps to meet with their best customers and get to learn the market. It is always a fun thing to do, and I was definitely looking forward to it. While planning this little jaunt, I called up an old friend of mine, Rob Plut, who lives in Denver, and ask him if I could stay with him for a few days and catch up. During this quick phone call I was shocked to discover that I would also be in town for one of the greatest events that happens in America every year: The Great American Beer Festival! But more on that later…

Colorado is an interesting state. To its east lies Kansas, north is Wyoming, and to the south is New Mexico. This gives a crossroads feel to the state, and people from all walks of life find themselves in its capital, Denver. On my first day I drove with one of their fantastic reps up to Fort Collins. The town is home to the great New Belgium Brewing, so I assumed that this would be a beer town only. But no, they love their wine there too! As it turns out, I was told that our wine is the best selling Malbec that Unity Selections carries, and Fort Collins is a major purchaser of them. How cool is that!

After a long day of work Rob and I went to his favorite beer and wine shop, Little Raven Vineyards. Being more of a beer man, Rob hadn’t spent too much time checking out their Argentinean wine selection, but upon closer inspection we discovered that they are doing a brisk business selling the Gozzo Malbec.

Now, after a couple more days of work, the big night was upon us, the Great American Beer Festival was happening. This was my first time going, so I think that a little explanation is in order. It is a three day festival that takes place annually at the Denver Convention Center. They always sell out (this year there were 49,000 ticket holders and volunteers), have around 500 breweries, and your ticket entitles you to a one ounce pour of any beer that you want during the four and a half hours each day that it is open. This year, there were about 2,100 beers being poured, so even though we did our best we only managed to sample a fraction of them! Needless to say, people fly in from all over the world for this event.

Although we are in the wine business, many of you will remember that beer is always close to my heart. I started brewing beer in the college dorms (hopefully my old R.A. isn’t reading this) and during my time in Europe I really developed an interest in the craft. It was thrilling to be around so many people that are so passionate about what they were doing. The brewers and their representatives have spent lifetimes making their dreams come true, and what they are doing with beer has come leaps and bounds from where it was just 20 years ago. Some of the standouts for me were the Dogfish Head Brewery, who make historic and boutique regional beers at their brewery in Delaware. For example, they created a beer, called “Midas Touch,” that uses molecular evidence from an ancient Turkish amphora to re-create a beer from antiquity. Another brewery that I loved is called Chama River Brewing, and they make a beer that has been aged for five months in used wine barrels, giving the beer a delicious wine aroma right off the bat.

The list of favorites, of course, goes on and on, but a final thought about the beer industry in America is how diverse and regional it is becoming. The styles available are unprecedented, and people are experimenting with all new kinds of ingredients (jalapenos, maple syrup, vanilla, etc.). And it is beautifully not homogenized, you can definitely tell a Pacific Northwest beer from a New England beer from a Southern beer (is that terroir?).

It was a really fun experience to fly down to Denver for a few days. People all over Colorado are loving our wines, and every year they put on the best beer festival in the country. I will definitely be making this an annual event.