Julio & Juliot Viola

JULIO
& JULITO
VIOLA • 51
& 25 • Winery Impresarios • Bodegas del Fin
del Mundo • Patagonia, Argentina

Founders
of a handsome, high-tech, space age winery, and developers
of two (and counting) turnkey satellite wineries for
investors, the Violas are riding the gold rush wine wave in
Southern Argentina. Viola senior comes from a successful
career in big real estate, buying land near Neuquen (the
capital city) and building housing and malls. His
mass-produced vineyard lands sprung up like Topsy, scratched
out of the Patagonian desert. Viola and Son’s big plans for
this big country are already largely realized. Beautiful
architecture, on the ball. Julio’s stentorian voice and
hail-fellow smile are tempered by his son’s genial modesty
and incisive wit. Bodega del Fin del Mundo translates
colorfully to ‘winery at the end of the earth’ but there’s
nothing outlandish about the relatively rich wines. BFM’s US
importer is Gaucho Imports, who also handle the prestigious
Luigi Bosca winery in Mendoza.

SOLID
BACKING The Neuquen
government is helping finance us wine investors. If
petroleum should fail, they fear the economy would collapse.
Wine is the fallback or fail-safe plan for this region. They
made it easier for us by supplying guaranteed loans. Our
investors are not agriculturists. They just wanted to own
wineries and make a good investment, but knew nothing. We
did it all to set them up properly: made plantations,
irrigation, built the winery, bought machines, brought in
winery staff, trained the workers, and gave them the key.
For two years, I showed them how to run it and give
technical assistance freely.

STRONG
TEAM Agricultural
engineer Jose Antonio “Pepe” Barria is the most recognized
agricultural man in this region. He’s serious, intelligent,
resourceful. Having him around is important for investors,
no? Our company has its own good background now, and a good
reputation built on the work of Pepe in the vineyard and
Marcelo Miras in the winery.

DECISION
by COMPUTER In
1998, when we were making our proposals, Argentina was
facing a big crisis in agriculture. The question was which
crops to plant in this region. There were these big bills I
had to pay; there were all our people needing work; so I
needed some things that I can sell, no? We started thinking
very hard, and then put all the thinking into the computer,
metaphorically speaking. What is the climate? What is the
humidity? How many hours of sun do we have? What kind of
soil do we have? How much water can we get? What happens
with the wind? With all that information, what is the best
thing we can plant? The answer was – wine grapes.

SCALAR
PREDICTION There
were oenological scales that helped us with the decision.
Winkler and Fregoni, which showed by soil and weather,
that’s why Bordeaux, that’s why Napa. We used those scales
too to know that we were in a very, very good region to make
wines.

PRICE
POINT We want our
best wine today to be found in restaurants in the USA with a
price for less than $50. Your average drinker, not a wine
expert, in maybe Cambridge, New York, San Francisco, will
want to have dinner for him and his wife and not spend more
than $50 for this bottle. If you go to other countries, you
may have to spend more – do you understand what I’m saying?
For your average tourist traveling around the world, It’s
not easy to choose a wine that’s less than $50 and is more
or less good.

BIG
PLANS When you come
back in a year or two, more or less, we will have offices, a
tasting room, and a restaurant. But they won’t be complete
until the winery is finished because without good wines,
long-term marketing is impossible. Right now we are buying
time. We are making 1.3M liters of wine, and our capacity is
1.7M. This is an estate: we buy no one else’s grapes. We are
looking at our empty spaces to see what we might grow next
year.

GOOD
GRAPE Neuquen’s
very unique climate is dry and windy with temperatures
ranging between day and night by 20 degrees C. This thickens
the grape places. That is why we have wines with such rich
color and fruit extract. We’ve planted grapes and clones in
test plots: Cabernet Sauvignon, Malbec, Merlot, Pinot Noir,
Syrah, Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot, Chardonnay, Sauvignon
Blanc, Semillon, Viognier. You can say I’m a liar, but not
one of them has failed us yet. In fact, we’ve won medals
(international and national) with most varietals. The
youngest ones, Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot haven’t had
their first vintage yet.

BIG
BROTHER We are like
a big brother to NQN and Familia Schroeder. We show them the
way and open some doors. We don’t think of them as
competition as we work together, and if we succeed in making
Patagonia a well-known wine region, the demand will be
bigger than the offer so we will all put our products on the
shelves. Also, having good neighbors who work as hard as we
do is good for the region and general morale. In fact, we
are just now founding the Neuquen Wineries Association so we
can put our efforts together and be much more effective in
this promotion business.

BACK
to BACK Julito: My
father is owner, president, developer of all this
investment, and founder of this new wine region. He’s the
one who put everything together and made it work. He has
enormous common sense and the ability to surround himself
with the best people for each task. I am his son; my name is
the same. So I help him with his agenda and back him up at
meetings and events. I do marketing, fly to wine fairs, and
take care of some COMEX markets, like the USA. I write back
labels, brochures, and press releases.

HOBBIES
Julio: My best
hobby is coming to the vineyard and trying to make the –
pruning? Not as work, you understand, just to try to
understand what is going on – the plant, what is coming, how
it all works. I try to have my own rows, and listen to what
Pepe is saying, and why it is growing up better or not. I
like very much those things. I come to the fields on
weekends, drive around in the truck, look at the vineyards,
no?, and drink mate (tea). I used to play golf or something
like that, but it’s better for me coming here. No, no more
golf, in this moment. Yes, ha ha! Maybe I can open a golf
course. Later! Much later. Julito: I like sports, any kind.
In winter I snowboard, in summer I water-ski. Football and
tennis all year long. Music I like a lot, to listen and try
to play. Writing, too.