Sunday, March 23, 2008
Food, "Behind the Bar"

Steady growth

Behind the scenes of a local wine distributor

CREDIT:Courtesy of Lisa Allen
Lisa Allen

By Hope S. Philbrick

    For Lisa Allen, the path to owning her own company started with a layoff. Though she spent her days looking for another job in the public relations and advertising industry, she spent her evenings helping some friends prepare for the grand opening of a new wine bar. That was 12 years ago in Dallas, Texas, but the wine industry kept calling. Today, she’s back home in Atlanta and helms a fast-growing wine distributorship with five employees. Sunday Paper talked with Allen to learn more.

Q Did you always want to work with wine?
A I got into the wine industry completely by chance. After I was laid off from an ad firm, I got the job that I thought I wanted in advertising development and public relations in Dallas, but I had met some people in the wine business and stayed in touch with them. They kept offering me a job. One day, I just felt that I couldn’t say no again. I still don’t know why I decided to give it a try. My first official wine job was an assistant with the Texas Wine and Grape Growers Association, a small trade organization. Now we’re getting ready to add Texas wines to our portfolio, so I’m not letting go.

    I’m from Georgia. I moved to Texas after graduating from college and was there five years. I came back to Atlanta for graduate school at Emory.

    In 2001, I launched Wine Insite, a technology-based wine solution for grocery stores. Using kiosks with touch-screen panels, consumers get personal wine recommendations based on the store’s inventory. I had customers, but the business wasn’t sustainable. Not all good ideas are good business.

What’s Big Boat Wine Co.?
We officially started selling wine in October 2005. In Georgia, you have to be an importer or a distributor—you’re not allowed to be both. I wanted to be an importer, but couldn’t get anywhere with the current distributors so decided to become a wholesaler. We sell to anyone with an on- or off-premise license, or businesses that can resell to consumers.

    We’re a small family-owned company, and so we seek out small family-owned wineries. I originally sold only South African wines, but in the last 12 months, I’ve worked to diversify the portfolio. But the common thread remains that our wines are from small family-owned wineries and are usually both the growers and winemakers. These wines have very small production, which means that what we have is definitely unique. These are not mass-market brands. Famous brands sell themselves. Our challenge is that we commonly hear, “I never heard of that winery.” We bring wines that are new to the United States and the southeast to market. But they’re not necessarily new; for example, one of our South African wines has been around for six generations and was started in 1864.

We’re looking for great wines that have a story to tell in every bottle and deliver value for the money.

Do we as Georgians have access to most wines?
State laws are not as restrictive as they used to be; although it could be opening up more since several alcohol-related pieces of legislation are pending including the Sunday sales bill. But in 2001, the law changed so that if you are a winery and don’t have representation by a wholesaler in the state of Georgia, you can get a special license from the state that allows you to ship to consumers. A lot of people don’t know this, but those small wineries you stumble across while traveling who don’t have a distributor in Georgia can sell to you and it’s completely legal. There is some limit—maybe five cases per winery per year or something, and it could get better, but at least the door is cracked if not wide open. SP