ABOUT US

Our mission is simple: to build connections, create opportunity and give value to the wines we love.

When you start a company, you hopefully know what you want to to do and why you want to do it. It’s the ‘how’ that persistently permeates your thoughts at all times. Lately, I have been focusing a lot on why.

Building connections means that we are connecting with the life’s work of our collaborators and friends making wine in Spain. It is our job to share it with respect, with passion, with knowledge. To do so, there is a Spanish word which I love, ‘defender'. Literally to defend, but idiomatically to justify, to explain, to provide context for and to sell in the market. That is our work: it is my job as well as the work of our partnering distributors alongside their supportive restaurants and retailers. Finally, it is our goal to connect our producers, their work and their wine to those who drink it, thanks to the heavy lift/support of neighborhood shops, wine clubs and restaurants . Thank you to everyone for your support and for helping us to connect!

Creating opportunity begins with yourself. It is not selfish, it is simply the raison d’être for anyone who starts their own company. We will then create opportunities for wine producers to sell their wines in other markets, which takes real work, persistence , good timing and great relationships. Our goal as well is to create opportunity for others as our growth and needs require. Not merely in terms of hiring decisions, but also in our selection of vendors, collaborators, in deciding how we invest and donate our time and dollars.

Giving value (‘dar valor’ in Spanish) is a term I have heard often by Spanish winemakers involved in the sorts of tiny, personal projects we love. It means so much more than justifying an ex-cellar price. Giving value is encouraging an aging farmer to rent his parcel to you, and then sharing photos of how beautiful it looks after your hard work in the vineyard. Giving value is preserving centuries old traditions of small scale agriculture. Giving value means that we recognize how hard our producers work in the field and the cellar (and at the wine fairs and on their computers..) Therefore we need to honor their work through our own efforts and those of our supporting partners. Giving value is not merely transactional. It involves the investment of time, labor and emotion. It is a mutual understanding and respect for the hard but incredibly rewarding work we all share in producing and bringing to market the wines that we love.

-Joe Manekin