Hola Chile y Argentina

Wine Grenade’s versatile and highly portable technology can be used on wines from around the globe, so it didn’t take much time for our team to start working on adding South America to our distribution network.

So in May, Cyril packed up his bags and headed South from his California base to meet distributors in Argentina and Chile, the ninth and seventh largest winemaking producing countries in the world respectively. ​

Home of many red varieties, and in particular their signature varietals that are Malbec for Argentina and Carmenere for Chile, the two markets share many similarities but are also remarkably different.
​
Argentina has an international reputation for great quality wine produced at large scale however has suffered massively in tumultuous economic times. However, as Forbes reports, there are strong signs Argentina is ready is ready for a comeback to the international stage. A new government has removed the import/export tariffs that crippled the trade economy for the last five years, and winemakers are beginning to look externally again rather than focus on the domestic market.

Cyril lived for over a year in Mendoza and capitalised on his industry contacts to meet potential distributors. He also presented Wine Grenade directly to local winemakers, receiving positive feedback.

Chile has steadily emerged as a global wine force. Considered as “new world” as its neighbour Argentina, Chile’s favourable growing conditions and now stable economic climate has enabled it to become the 4th largest exporter of wine into the United States (after France, Italy and Australia). With a length of over 4,000 km from North to South, Chile offers a broad spectrum of wine varietals. Names such as the valleys of Casablanca, Maipo, Colchagua and Curico might all sound familiar, and if not - try them!
The South American exploration builds on our experience creating distributor partnerships in the USA, Canada and Mexico. Our expansion strategy is based on gaining scale through trusted local partners and as a business we are building knowledge about how to create sustainable, profitable partnerships.

Overall, the trip was highly efficient in identifying potential partners and the feedback on our technology raised a lot of interests so we can definitely say that we will certainly we having several wine grenade aging Chilean and Argentinian wines in the near future!