Navigating La Place w/ Rebekah Wineburg & Diego Garay, Quintessa

Building a global brand takes a lot of effort and investment. Even with the network of >400 negociants on La Place de Bordeaux, wineries have to make significant investments in brand building and press. Rebekah Wineburg, Winemaker, and Diego Garay, Director of Exports for Quintessa in Napa Valley, discuss their journey towards selling in 50 countries in 3 years through the La Place system.

Detailed Show Notes:

Rebekah’s background

She wanted to be a winemaker at 16
Worked in Italy, New Zealand, Australia, and mainly in CA
At Quintessa for 7 years

Diego’s background

Worked on exports for Sena and Almaviva in Chile, who export ~98-99% of production
Director of Export for all Huneeus wines

Quintessa

Estate winery in Rutherford, Napa
160 acres of vineyards and make 1 red wine (Quintessa) - ~8-12k cases/year
Until recently, it mostly sold domestically - ~50% DTC, ~50% US wholesale

La Place de Bordeaux Overview

A marketplace where most Bordeaux wines are traded, often futures
3-tier system - chateaux sell to negociants, who sell to international trade
Criteria to be on La Place - brand pedigree (e.g., high scores) and a well-known brand
Wineries need to build demand for negociants w/o the help of importers, as they are not brand builders
New world wines have only been selling through La Place for the last 15-20 years
Courtiers (brokers that find negociants) - some specialize in new world wines
>400 negociants on La Place
Non-exclusive system

Exporting via La Place

2022 - exports ~5-15% of production, primarily Asia, UK, Germany, Switzerland
The goal of exporting - build a world-recognized wine estate
Long-term export goals - ~30-35% of production
Prior to La Place - exported ~1% to Canada, Japan, Mexico
They started selling on La Place in 2019
Negociant reached out to Quintessa looking for new world wines
Quintessa working w/ <10 negociants directly w/o a courtier
Demand growing - negociants asking for more wines, need to start allocating them
Need to do a lot of education for global trade on what makes Quintessa unique (e.g., terroir, place), need to show the history and age-ability of wines

Benefits of La Place

It helps put wines in a global perspective (e.g., Rebekah had to start presentations with CA instead of Rutherford or Napa)
Reach high-end distribution in a short period of time - Quintessa is now in 50 countries in 3 years

Tradeoffs of La Place

Need to invest in brand building
May see discounting due to the non-exclusive system
Logistics - send all wines to Bordeaux, which are then sent on to the rest of the world (more manageable for the winery but may have extra ship lengths)
Loose control of distribution (try to get depletion reports but challenging as clientele list is the most valuable asset of negociants)

Costs of La Place and pricing