Bodegas Verum entrusts Nimbility to build their Asia markets
The recent signing of Castilla-La Mancha’s leading family-owned winery, Bodegas Verum, marks the beginning of Nimbility’s efforts to build and diversify the Spanish wine category in Asian markets.
With over 200 years of history and winemaking experience in this relatively unknown and hugely undervalued region of Spain, Bodegas Verum specialises in crafting wines that are authentic expressions of the land, climate, production processes and passion of the family behind them.
“We strongly believe that now is the time to be making a push to diversify Spain’s offering in Asia and encourage consumers to trade up,” says Nimbility Founding Partner Francesca Martin. “China’s 2018 import statistics clearly show the country’s waning thirst for cheap European wines, with the average price for Spanish wine increasing by over 20%. However, Spain is woefully underrepresented compared to France or Italy in terms of the quality wines it has to offer. It is therefore our job to find wineries from Spain that we believe can raise the country’s profile in this respect. With Bodegas Verum, we believe we have found such a winery.”
The core of the Verum ranges focuses on indigenous Spanish varieties, with Arién, Malvasia, Verdejo and Albillo leading the way for the whites; and Tempranillo, Garnacha, Mazuelo and Graciano for the reds. La Posada, their entry level range, represents easy-going, single varietal expressions of Arién, Verdejo, Garnacha and Tempranillo, offering quaffable wines at unbeatable value. Highly eye-catching and easy to recognise labels make this range perfect for supermarkets, local wholesalers and the on-trade.
The ‘Verum’ range is a step up. A mix of indigenous and international varieties at competitive price points giving these wines strong marketability across diverse channels, particularly retail and the on-trade, while remaining true to their Spanish roots. This range has something for everyone with its diversity of profile and price points, including aromatic whites, a Cabernet Franc-Tempranillo Rosado, and a number of easy-drinking, fleshy Spanish reds, predominantly based on Tempranillo. The wines are currently available in Japan through Arcane.
In the face of on-going climate change and global warming, the Ulterior range is winemaker and fourth son Elias Lopez-Montero’s effort to experiment with indigenous Spanish varieties that have the capacity to grow successfully despite Castilla-La Mancha’s rising annual temperatures. This range captures the truest expressions of wines from Castilla-La Mancha using organic viticulture and low intervention, highly traditional winemaking techniques including fermentation with indigenous yeasts and the use of amphora and large, predominantly used oak vessels for fermentation and ageing. The wines are incredibly pure and elegant expressions of the varieties and vineyards from which they come, and should be considered seriously by Spanish specialists and wine lovers searching for something genuinely unique.
True to their pioneering and trail-blazing ethos, in 2018 Bodegas Verum released their first wines from Río Negro in Patagonia, a venture between the Lopez-Montero and Del Río Elzora families. Winemakers Elias Lopez-Montero and Hans Vinding Diers, owner of Noemia, one of Patagonia’s leading wineries, and the man behind Patagonia’s prestigious Chacra wines, joined their wealth of experience to create Verum by Verum, a project that unites two wine-growing regions at 39° North and South of the equator. Elegant, spicy expressions of Malbec make up the core of the range with a fresh, slightly smoky Chardonnay and an earthy Pinot Noir providing the hallmarks of Argentinian Patagonia. The wines are available in Japan via Arcane.
“We are incredibly excited to be taking on Verum’s diverse and broad portfolio to build across Asia”, says Francesca Martin. “The four ranges represent something for everyone and the high quality of the wines across the board will ensure that Verum becomes a trusted, go-to option for consumers, whether buying in retail, online or in the on-trade.”
For more information about Bodegas Verum in Asia, please contact info@nimbilityasia.com