Ramón Huidobro
General Secretary and Vice-President of Spanish wine appellation D.O. Rías Baixas, Ramón Huidobro, in an interview for the Spanish news agency EFE, has highlighted the internationalization process of these certified Galician wines, given the fact that in the last seven years exports have risen from 8% to 22% and their wines are present in around seventy different countries.
“We’re now starting to look at meaningful figures, most of all when taking into account that one of the most crucial things for a wine appellation is to be strong in its own territory, which is where we also have to fight”, he stated.
In this sense, he explained that the commercial strategy of this quality brand is to try to balance three levels (Galicia, the rest of Spain and the foreign markets), although the Galician market “continues to be our natural and fundamental market”.
Mr. Huidobro acknowledged that their growth in Spain is continued, but “it gets tougher by the year” due to better wines coming on the market and the existence of “a ferocious price war that we cannot enter due to the particular conditions of our viticulture, which translate in high production costs”.
“We will never enter the medium to low priced wines war, this obliges us to compete only by obtaining the highest quality”, he indicated.
Regarding their sales and marketing strategy, he pointed out that, after Galicia, Catalonia, Valencia and Murcia, the USA would represent its third market, with figures he considers “significant”, adding up to nearly two million liters, and distributed in a “difficult, demanding and selective market”.
He affirmed that the marketing of their wines in eight states has reached a level they now consider to be “on the rise with our wines being highly valued by both consumers and critics alike”, something which also opens doors for them in other international markets where they are not so well known.
Mr. Huidobro pointed out that D.O. Rías Baixas has a three year Marketing Plan in the USA as part of a collaboration agreement between the ICEX (Spanish Overseas Trade Institute) and the IGAPE (Galician Economic Promotion Institute) with an annual budget of $750.000.
Along with their campaigns in the USA, he underlined that they also work periodically in the Far East, specifically in China, Japan and Hong Kong, and that this year they disembarked in Tunisia for the first time.
Mr. Huidobro is wholly committed to the marriage of wine and food, not only via Spanish gastronomy but also through other far eastern cuisines, such as Chinese, Thai, Japanese, especially in countries like the USA, where this combination is very popular.
He underlined that “our wines pair very well with those types of foods, and are quite fashionable there, and that they also lean on Spanish gastronomy, though not necessarily the type of cuisine associated with the Mediterranean, but rather that of the Atlantic, centered more on fish and seafood.
“The products speak for themselves, taking a leading role, and it’s the perfect performance, a magnificent montage with the wine”, he concluded.
The source of this article is the superb tourism, gastronomy and Galician wines website http://www.vinogallego.com/
