In The News

The Toronto Star features Toronto-based Vintage One Wines, a year-old Dundas West winery that creates custom, private order vintages. The work of Argentina-born siblings Alejandra and Jeronimo de Miguel, Vintage One is unique micro-brewery in that it invites its customers to be as little or as much involved as they like in the wine-making process.

"The slim, black entrance on Dundas St. W., just west of Islington Ave., gives no clue as to what you will find inside Vintage One Wines. A steady stream of black-clad city folk pours down a flight of stairs into an anteroom swollen with the strains of Argentine tango guitar. Its grip seduces them into the large caves beyond, filled with rows of gleaming stainless tanks and a half a football field of wooden barrels. This is a real, working urban winery."

"The pair import frozen grapes from their homeland and a half-dozen more countries, and work with customers here on Dundas St. to create custom, private-order vintages. You can buy into a share of a barrel as an individual, or go in with a group or a club. You can be involved from concept through bottling, from aging and blending down to bottle design. Corporations use the place for retreats and team-building exercises; restaurants arrange their own private-label supplies."

"The siblings are riding a great trend wave: Toronto is in love with malbec � just try to find a menu without the varietal. According to the Consulate General of Argentina, Ontarians downed 8.1 million litres of Argentine wine in 2010, about 5 million litres of that malbec."

"And they have hit another trend, says loyal customer Don Tapscott, best-selling Toronto author of marketing and information technology books. "Their business model is about creating experiences, highly customized experiences, as opposed to selling product."

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original source Toronto Star