The Global Wine Industry

We had an interesting meeting with Sven Bruchfeld from Movi today, the organization that is trying to gain support from some of the 8% of Chilean wineries that are not part of Wines of Chile.  Movi is a winery organization in Chile for small wineries whose owners manage the winery.  Sven said that there is no concrete definition of small, but that he thinks after 30,000 cases/year, it becomes difficult for a single person to be involved in all aspects of a winery.

The meeting with Sven started out by asking how we found out about Movi.  I don’t know if it was a google search on Chile wine blog or a tweet from someone in the chile-wine twitter list I started, but The Austral Group got us together without ever talking or emailing.

Movi currently has 17 wineries onboard, and has a lot of other wineries waiting on the sidelines to see what happens.  The Global Wine Industry visited Gillmore last year and had a great time.  Their vines are dry farmed, their bottles had artistic labels drawn by a family member, they had pumas at the winery, and the tour was given in 100 degree weather by a family member that was pregnant.  If all Movi wineries can offer the same experience as Gillmore winery to customers I think Movi has a lot of potential.

I asked them if they’ve thought about attending the Wine Bloggers’ Conference or other independent-minded wine events and Sven said that Movi is so new that they haven’t gotten that far yet.

Movi has a WordPress blog and a twitter account (@MoviChile).  The WordPress blog is a good start, their icon is cool, but I guess the whole point behind Movi is to get past wines that are branded to look authentic and to connect consumers and trade to wineries that are the Davids fighting the Goliaths.

Sven also told us that there are 3 people making Kosher wine in Chile and that there is no good Chilean zinfandel.  Good luck with Movi and Polkura Sven!