Passionate oenophile finds niche(1)
For someone who never drank wine -- or liquor -- until 2003, Dominic Allnutt's career path took quite the unusual turn.
Now 33, he was studying at Concordia University back then, and the word was going around that working at the Quebec Liquor Corp. was the in thing. So he applied for a part-time job to make a bit of cash, even though he was supremely uninterested in anything to do with oenophilia.
"Then some guy (at the corporation who eventually became his mentor) asked me if I wanted to go to Bordeaux for Vinexpo [the world's most important wine trade show]. So I went," Mr. Allnutt said. A world opened up on the spot. "When I came back, all of a sudden, I was all about wine," said Mr. Allnutt at his home office in Pierrefonds, a veritable shrine to wine -- there are dozens of empty bottles on which are scribbled the occasions during which each bottle was consumed and the names of the guests privileged enough to have done the consumption. The rest of the space is taken up entirely by books on oenology.
Mr. Allnutt made up for lost time by reading all of those and any other tome he could find -- on types of grapes and vines, soil, humidity, dryness and so on. A little over a year ago, he took the next logical step. He launched his venture, Vinnovation, a one-man operation importing high-end wines, mostly from France -- more specifically, from Burgundy -- and California.
So far, he has sold about 3,000 cases of 12 bottles, 90% of them to restaurants and the other 10% to individuals and to the Quebec Liquor Corp. itself, much of the latter being of the mass wine variety.
Lots of other small importers do what he does, Mr. Allnutt said. But not many have "40 winemakers in France and others in California." If trekking through gorgeous winding roads in Bourgogne and tasting fine wines sounds paradisiacal rather than a job, Mr. Allnutt quickly dispels that notion.
It's never easy, he said, to run a block-building business. Buying wine in France, in particular, is not unlike doing business in China -- it takes patience, lots and lots of it.
"No one says 'yes' right away in Burgundy when you ask to buy a wine you've loved. You have to come back three, five times before anything happens." All that courtship time is not free, he noted.
Mr. Allnutt credits Martine Palau, owner and vintner of the Bordeaux Chateau Pontet-Laroche, who offered her wines during one of his regular visits to the region, making it possible to get Vinnovation started.
All of the Pontet-Laroche seen on Quebec Liquor Corp. shelves at $17.30 a bottle comes courtesy of Ms. Palau via Mr. Allnutt-- who displaced the previous Pontet-Laroche importer.
One official order from a wine grower is all, in fact, that the corporation, a notorious monopoly that hasn't exactly covered itself in glory in terms of price and selection, requires for someone to launch an importing business. Mr. Allnutt made the rounds of restaurants in Montreal that were likely to
order the higher-end, off-the-beaten-path wines, and it worked.
