Ep. 2521 Adriano Albanese of Tommasi Family Estates | Asia Wine Market

In this part of the China, young people are very curious to try new wine, but they do it in a quite of a different way, not necessarily through wine education or wine dinners, wine masterclass. There's a particular trend that I really love to see. There is, this sort of outlets that are called, in Chinese, which means literally means early c, late a, where c is coffee and a is alcohol. So, basically, these are artisan coffee shops, and you find all sort of coffees during the day. So early coffee. And then in the late time of the day, they stop selling coffee, and they start selling wine. And you'll be surprised to see they're open to try approachable wines, expensive wines, champagne, and that's just happened in a very unconventional setting. Welcome to Asia Wine Market, the series that takes you inside the most dynamic and fast evolving wine markets across Asia. I'm your host, Roze, and in each episode, we'll uncover the stories, trends, and opportunities shaping the future of wine in this vibrant region. Whether you are a winery looking to expand in Asia or a wine professional exploring global trends, this series is for you. Hello, and welcome back to Asia wine market series on the Italian wine podcast. We're finally back on track with the series, and we first started the series with Almaty special edition, which was focused on Kazakhstan and other Central Asian markets. But resuming the series, we're going to explore other countries and markets across Asia. Today, we are moving to Thailand. But we're not going to talk about Thailand specifically. We're going to talk about China a lot because today, my guest is Adrian Albanese. He is the Asia Pacific export manager for Tomasi Family Estates. Now he's based in Bangkok. Adriano began his wine journey in Scotland before moving to Beijing in 2018, where he worked as on trade sales manager at East MidWest Fine Wines, one of China's leading importers. So welcome, Adriano. We are very happy to have you here today. I'm very happy to be here. Hello, everyone. Another thing that I would like to say that Adriano was the first ever person who interviewed me for a wine job. And you're interviewing me back now, which is great. Yeah. But the interview wasn't great because I didn't get accepted. It was a tough time. It was, it was during COVID, I remember, or just, in the middle of it. We couldn't hire anyone. It was really difficult. So but it's great that we kept connection, and, we're still here. That's that's the beauty of, the wine business, especially in this part of the world. Great connection always stays. It's a fun it's a fun industry. Yeah. That's great. Adriana, before we move on to our main topics, which I'm gonna talk about later, can you briefly walk us through how your journey in the wine industry began and what led you to Asia? Because Adriano, he's from Puglia. He's Italian. Yeah. So I I was born professionally actually as a Chinese language expert. I studied Chinese in Rome University, and then I moved to Beijing to study Chinese again because Chinese requires a long time of studying. Then I decided to move to Scotland to do a translation studies master degree, and, I was pretty much set off into become an interpreter and translator. So that's what I wanted to be. Wine was not part of the equation until I started to work as a student part time worker. Like many of us, when you study, you just take an extra job. In a shop on the main street of Edinburgh that was owned by this third generation family owned Italian food and wine company, so big shout out to them. Then after a while, they asked me to take to be in charge of a section of the shop, which was whiskey and wine. It was my favorite. So I was pretty much fond about whiskey, but I didn't know much about wine, and they offered me to study wine. So I said, okay. Okay. Sure. Let's let's do that. And they offered me a WCT two, and that's where, boom, the universe of wine appeared to me. And I was just in the middle of, thinking about a dissertation topic, and I was thinking, oh, maybe there is I could put wine and Chinese together, and I was able to do it. So, yeah, shout out to to them, to Valvona and Krola. They started my journey. And after a little bit, I did my level three as well in Edinburgh. I became very passionate about wine, and I was realizing how I was losing my Chinese at the same time. My wine knowledge was going up. My Chinese was going down. And I decided to go back to China, and I found a job for, a East West fine wines while I was in Edinburgh, and I moved there in 2018. You stayed within the company for six years. Right? For six years. Yeah. Almost six years. So I joined 2018, just at their fifteenth anniversary. I remember it was great. On the first week, we had the all the producers coming over. And then, yeah, and then after a bit, COVID started, and I stayed in China. Resisted through COVID. Managed the on trade channel in Beijing. Started taking care of marketing. At the same time, getting into studying diploma. I was getting busy, less busy. And, after a while, I was really starting to think about moving to the next step, moving away from working for a one importer, and that's how the opportunity with Tomasi Family States came up. And together with that, also the relocation to to Thailand. Okay. And that's great. So I really wanted to interview you because you've been on both sides of the business. I would like to talk about our main focus for today. So our three learning objectives are understanding the Chinese wine market because you have a very extended experience there. And, also, we are going to explore Italian wines growth in Asia Pacific, the whole region in general. And, also, we are going to gain some practical insights on partnerships and long term strategy given your experience current experience with Tamasi now. So let's start with your work with the importer EMW Fine Wines. So it's one of the major players in Chinese distribution network of wine. And what did you learn there about how importers operate, and what makes a successful partnership with foreign wineries for importer in China? So East Midwest Fine Wine, I think they're just a bit more than twenty years old in the industry. They're one of those nationwide, wine importer with a very strong focus on the on trade channel. It's one of those companies that they have usually a head office and a main warehouse in Shanghai with branch offices around China in the main city. So I was working in the branch office of Beijing where we had our own warehouse, our own marketing department. And then, regionally, we would have in North China some sales rep in other second tier city, like, for example, Xi'an or, Tallien and so on. So working for EMW was great because if in Scotland, I learned about wine, in, China, I learned how to sell wine, how to how to become a salesperson. The way it works is that for the main cities where you have your own team, like myself, for the own trade, this company do their own direct distribution. So their own salespeople, their own marketing, their own logistics will deal with the restaurants, hotels, private customers, distributors, and so on. Then once you start moving outside of the big cities, more often, you will do some agreement with some regional distributors. And our own back then sales rep in EMW, they would sort of, support the distributor into opening accounts and, promote, the sales. Usually, this kind of importers, like BMW, most of the brands have been with them for more than ten years, if not fifteen or if not from the very beginning. So that's the style of the company I was, I was working for. Definitely working for them. Being on the other side, I've seen a lot of winery representative or export manager coming over. So I would I would notice that, great partnership with a winery was always with the wineries that would visit the market often. As a salesperson, you would sell the wine of the people that you see more