#BUBBLES, WINE AND OLIVE OIL
It’s either to deal with up to 4x higher prices, or to run the research and do it yourself. The latter is much more rewarding for both family and friends.
PREMIER CREW CHAMPAGNE
“It’s your duty to prepare Champagne, I’ll book a boat and we’ll all celebrate this New Year riding across Singapore river and at midnight the boat will birth at Marina Bay and we’ll have all the Fireworks in the sky above us” – told me my friend, and this is how it all started.
While searching for the Champagne I understood that the only options available are either usual suspects like Moet & Chandon or cheap “villiage” quality champagne from small distributors (not to mention Cava). And because we just returned from the wine and gastro tour from France and visited multiple Champaigne producers and wineries – I decided to give it a shot. I wrote to the boutique Premier Crew Champagne producer we just met and which Champagne we liked a lot that I wanted to buy 6 cartons from him, but my surprise he refused to sell. It took me time to convince him that we’ve just been at his house, we liked his Champagne very much, we bought a few bottles and here are the pictures of you and me together!..
How were the people on a boat delighted to drink one of the best Champagnes in Singapore that night! We finished around 40 bottles. One of the best feedbacks I got was “Yury – your champagne was AWESOME! We did not have any hangover in the morning at all!”. Well, that’s a kinda serious branding =)
Since that night I already brought more than 250 bottles of Champagne to family and friends to enjoy.
BURGUNDY RED WINE
Burgundy region can be roughly compared with the huge chess board, where the squares are different land parcels where wine grows. There are Grand Crew, Premier Crew and the rest parcels of land. Those families that historically owned Grand and Premier crew land plots are lucky – their wine will always be expensive, no matter what. For the rest – it’s very difficult to differentiate because not many wine drinkers understand what the wine taste and the price depends on. This gives a huge opportunity for arbitrage. In other words, two adjustment land parcels pay have the same soil structure but its wine will have different pricing because one producer or its importers invest a lot in marketing, while another producer just sell on recommendations. And knowing the latter wine producers is a gold knowledge, because if to take Singapore as an example, the price for roughly the same wine (and AOC Burgundy requires producers to use the same production method so that wine at the end will solely depends on the soil structure) will differ up to 4 times!
When I came to Vinum wines that were located in my office building I was shocked how much they price wine to the end users. And I just returned from Burgundy and I know the price of this wine!.. Moreover, Vinum signed an exclusive dealership with those producers in Burgundy and the most discount they offer is just a few percent for the mutli thousand order.
Not willing to pay THAT much knowing all the above, I decided to bring the first shipment of wine for myself and friends as thanks to Champagne import I already knew the procedure and obtained the AVA importer’s license. Since then I have already brought around 450 of Bourgogne Pinot Noir and Chardonnay for me and my friends, but still the first Champagne import was the most memorable.
ORGANIC EXTRA VIRGIN OLIVE OIL.
A month ago, my Spanish friend opened my eyes telling me that (1) the real Extra Virgin Olive Oil is greenish in color and (2) that Spain is the largest exporter of Olive Oil in the World, and oil from Spain will be much cheaper than the one from France or else. I lost my sleep 0_o. I started my research and found the web site with the rankings of the Best Olive Oil in the World (both taste- and manufacturers-wise), and the best types of olives to pick from.
So, I contacted manufacturers of the top 10 oils (Google Translate was a great help for me as my Spanish is pretty poor), and finally selected the Organic Extra Virgin Olive Oil which won multiple awards in Europe and the US for the last 10 years. Of course, it did not make sense to import a liter or a two, so I decided to take a whole lot of 15L. To find friends who’d like to purchase a super-duper oil was an easy deal; actually, I found out that there is a HUGE demand for the quality olive oil in Singapore so there was an overbooking =)