More opportunities- Georgia's on my Mind

[Craig Winchell]

http://www.wineindustryinsight.com/RSS/ ... onal/76358

The Russian ban on wine imports from Georgia. That sure sounds like opportunity to me. I'll bet we could make kosher wine there for a song, and probably government subsidies to boot.

[Gabriel Geller]

Well Craig, there surely are plenty of opportunities out there wine-wise but Georgia? Really? Despite a 50-60 million bottles wine industry, Israel is already not so easy to sell even to the worldwide kosher market which sees competition growing regularly from France, Australia and the USA so just thinking about the many marketing/advertising expenses combined with the Georgian communist-reminiscent and certainly corrupted bureaucratic procedures that would be involved in such a project give me a headache... Now even a talented and experienced winemaker like you would need more than rock-solid nerves to be able to deal with the growers, real estate brokers etc. Now if you can find an investor willing to to handle those sides of the business I'd rather consider China over Georgia though the conditions are certainly not better there...

[Craig Winchell]

Gabriel, I was more thinknig of buying land cheap, establishing vineyards of quality, known varieties, building a winery, and still being able to undercut prices typically charged for kosher wine worldwide. Decent vin du table for $5.99 retail, which probably means putting out a product which will sell to importers for $24/case FOB winery. I think one could get a better quality product than Argentina's copackers will provide.

[Yehoshua Werth]

How are the quality of the present wines at the better places?
What is the Terrior like.
Cost VS. Chile?

Love be with you

[Alexander F]

Georgia has its own indigenous grape varieties. I tasted several semi-sweet wines imported to Israel and I agree with the banning of these wines .
Anyway, part of the wine is made dry. The most popular grapes are Rkatsiteli, Saperavi and Alexandrouli. Saperavi is the main red working horse.

[Craig Winchell]

The point is not what has been done in Georgia in the past (after all, it was a vassal of Russia for much of its recent history), or the weird and wonderful indigenous grape varieties, or the style of some of these, tradition being what it is. The point is that it's proven grape land and climate, an emerging market and production base which likely is a downright cheap place to set up a biz, and they'd probably be pleased to subsidize a good business plan in order to establish itself in the sector.

Yehoshua, Georgia is a ground floor opportunity. Chile is a mature producer at this point, with most of its land already bearing. Chile is not growing the way Argentina is. Argentina doesn't really appreciate US investment (although they love the US market), while Georgia does.