Jorge Ordonez

JORGE
ORDONEZ • 46 • IMPORTER • FINE WINES of SPAIN
• DEDHAM, MA

PROFILE
The human dynamo who imports Spain’s biggest, deepest wine
portfolio to America is not your everyday importer. Jorge
Ordonez goes way beyond buy and sell; he advises, cajoles,
teaches, pleads, strong-arms, consults with wineries all
over Spain to update techniques, explore old grapes and new
properties, and – bottom line – make better wine. He
candidly offers fresh ideas and constructive criticism on
quality control, vineyard management, dreaming up new
blends, marketing, and packaging. His astonishing track
record – 13O wines from 4O wineries – speaks volumes, but it
was an uphill struggle from 1987 poverty to 2OO5 plenty.
“When nobody cared about Spanish wines,” he claims proudly,
“I was there.”

HISTORY
SPEAKS Spain’s a very
ancient wine land – made wine long before the Romans. Spain
has the largest vineyard plantings on earth, but is third in
production because we do not irrigate. Under Franco, we had
only one winemaking school, centralized in Madrid. Today
there are several, but they’re basic instruction – more like
Winemaking for Dummies than U.C. Davis. We’re still
desperately short of savvy winemakers. We think we have the
best vineyards on earth – low-yielding, old vines – to make
Californian winemakers go berserko. Spain is no new
third-world country – we have a long, long track record.
Those are some reasons why my involvement is
total.

GROUND
LEVEL GOURMET My family
is in the high-end food and wine business in Malaga,
supplying restaurants along the Costa del Sol with top wines
and truffles, caviar, foie gras, Iberico ham. I learned the
trade from the bottom up; as the delivery guy, I loaded and
unloaded entire trucks on my back in the hot summer sun. I
cleaned the warehouse, wrote up orders, made orders to the
wineries, ran tastings – everything. From 1983 to 1987 my
brother and I managed the company and tripled the
business.

START from
ZERO My wife and I
moved to Boston, her hometown, in 1987, and I started all
over again. My English was non-existent, so I studied like
crazy the first year, spent most of my money on English
classes. I sold nothing – people hung up on me, couldn’t
pronounce my name or understand me. When you have no
experience, people are hard – they give you the boot. I got
books in French on America’s wine business. I learned who
the big guys were. The second year I sold my first container
to MRR Traders. The next year I sold three, then four. When
my first big company (Berceo) went Chapter 11, I replaced
them with Sierra Cantabria in Rioja Alta – who control not
only vineyards but land – and Borsao in Campo de Borja, near
Rioja’s southern tip and near Navarra, from where I’ve sold
oceans of Garnacha. The world associates Tempranillo with
Spain, but Garnacha is Spain’s true heart, both historically
and production-wise.

THINK
SMALL I wanted to work
with small companies in niche situations, because you can’t
compete with monsters like Berberana, Campo Viejo, or
Valdemar. With just me on the road and my wife in the
office, we were trying to cover America! I was selling
25O,OOO cases of wine a year! It’s only five or six years
since I hired my first employee. Today I have importers in
most major markets. I try to concentrate on opening one
market well at a time, not twenty markets badly. I tried for
two a year. I started with New England, then New York,
Florida, Chicago. California took five years, but we
succeeded – my importer is the largest distributor of
Spanish wines to Californians, a very discerning
bunch!

FIRSTS
I like to start slow and work on each product. I was the guy
who brought the first Txakoli, the first Godello to America.
When I first tasted Albarino I said, ‘Wow! This is so much
better than most of the Viura!’ I knew I had a niche for it.
My New York distributor said, ‘You’ll be lucky to sell 1OO
cases.’ I knew better. I’ve concentrated on Galicia rather
than Penedes: the wines are less known but more elegant and
more attuned to what I saw Americans like. Today I have
Nora, a fine Albarino; I’m a partner in the winery. I sold
the first vintage of Clos de l’Obac, 1989, the first
vinatage of a super premium wine from Priorato. I brought
wines from Catalayud, Cava, Montsant, La Mancha, Montilla. I
was the first to bring in Jumilla wines (most do best
without American grafts) and create a quality Toro wine
(with Sierra Cantabria, Numanthia). It’s not easy, like
trying to convince a Bordelais to start a winery in
Burgundy.

EL GRANDE
CHILL The last six
years I’ve slowed expansion to polish the portfolio. One
thing is to improve the shipping conditions. What’s the
point of having great wines if they’re cooked when they
arrive? Spanish white wine in particular has had a bad image
because of primitive production techniques and no
refrigerated transport. Today I’m still the only importer
who insists on refrigerated transport for containers (and
trucks) between March 15 and November 15. But even that was
not enough: we had to upgrade to refrigerated trucks to
transport wines from every winery to our – the only! –
refrigerated warehouse in Bilbao. Listen, you can have frost
in October in Ribera del Duero, but by lunch you’re sweating
and the wine’s cooked.

QC NOT ON
QT An Achilles heel of
Spain’s wine business has been lack of consistency. I’ve
tackled every aspect of quality control. When I was a kid I
knew how to sell wine and enjoy it, but nothing about
chemical details: corks, brettanomyces, TCA, mercaptans,
dimethyl-sulfides. I’m no doctor on the subject, but I made
it a point to learn and we’ve spent lots of money, running
seminars with enologists, analyzing and fixing the problems
of our producers. With reductive varietals like Tempranillo,
you have to avoid the rubber, canned-corn, truffley aromas.
Other problems require us to stick to old traditional
clones, get rid of old barrels, reduce crop yields. I’ve
brought gentler presses and open-top fermenters from
Australia to Spain.

MARKETING
IDEAS Sometimes I
envision niche bottlings for clients. Chapparal for Bodegas
Nekeas was my idea. They had this beautiful old-vine
Garnacha going into a blend – why not make a wine of that?
Tres Picos of Borsao was my idea. We taste 1OO tanks in one
day – from it comes a master blend for Borsao in America.
It’s no cookie-cutter product made in a factory. Its
complexity comes not from adding small amounts of other
grapes, but from various vineyards of Garnacha.

INTERNATIONALIZING
By now the craze has passed; the Spanish are more inclined
towards rediscovering and researching their own varietals –
even if it’s just a few experimental rows – that jumping
onto the French thing. I don’t oppose the idea: whatever it
takes to make a good wine, with some style. Bodegas Nekeas
makes nice blends with Cabernets and Tempranillo. I’d rather
see that than, say, straight Chardonnay or Merlot. I started
Naia with a few friends and the winemaker to make Verdejo;
we have only 3O hectares, there’s a waiting list in Spain!
When I arrived here, people were saying Garnacha was too
weak for anything but blending – ‘forget about
it!’

BEING
COOPERATIVE Most coops
are too unstable, but some have the same people running it
for years. Those that are stable and modern – Vina Alarba,
and, in effect, Borsao – I can do business with. As long as
we all realize there’s a cap on what we can produce and
sell, determined by the quality of the product.

MEET
MONASTRELL Among new
varietals in the market is Monastrell; Wrongo Dongo is 1OO%
Jumilla Monastrell, true to the area where it’s produced.
This grape does not behave like it does in France as
Mourvedre; it’s better in Jumilla because it gets lots of
hot sun, where it can ripen at 14% with little irrigation
and yields low (1.5 to 2.5 tons per acre). If you move it
away from Jumilla it underperforms. These ungrafted old
vines are infinitely better than grafted ones – like day and
night. (We taste a 2OO1 Juan Gil Monastrell from the same
winery – ripe, full-fruited, savory.) Yo, Retailers! Please
be more open-minded about Spain. It’s not the same country
as in 1987. We are quality, consistent, and different. Food
& Wine and Robert Parker predict that Spain will be the
next wine explosion country. We have old vineyards to die
for, and winemakers are coming to play here. You’ve tried
all the 2-for-$1O bottles; now try some $15 to $2O bottles
and see the value. Or compare a $4O Spanish wine with a $75
Californian. Bring consumers to new ventures! Trust our
high-end wines! Try Albarino with that grilled lobster! Try
Priorato with that venison!