December 26, 2015

By Shahnaz Mahmud

Wine for the World, as its name might suggest, is very precise in its goals: to pair top US winemakers with talented unknowns that reside in the emerging economies to bring their wines to market.

The start-up is the brainchild of New York-based Mika Bulmash, a former international development executive who has successfully turned one of her great passions into a promising business. Its wines are socially responsible, environmentally sustainable and financially viable, according to the company website: “Our wines take into consideration people, planet, and profit. We recognize that people, planet and profit are the key ingredients to business success and exceptionally good wines.”

Studying both microbiology and international development at the University of California, Berkeley, Napa Valley was within close reach and thusly sparked her avid interest in the wine industry. After spending several years in the public health and food security and agriculture sectors, in 2011, Bulmash decided to take the leap into the wine industry. That said, development is still very much a part of what she does. “We help artisanal winemakers from emerging markets who are talented but don’t have the financial marketing resources to get their wines here,” explains Bulmash.

High Degree of Difficulty for Small Producers

Wine for the World assists winemakers both on the front and back ends. The emerging market wine-makers get introduced to acclaimed, high-end Napa Valley winemakers who provide technical assistance and in some cases mentorship. Wine for the World also provides marketing support. On the back end, Bulmash highlights the high degree of difficulty small producers are faced with in trying to import their wines, due in part to a complex regulatory framework and a three-tier distribution system that dates back to the Prohibition Era. To that end, Wine For the World provides the wine upstarts with partnerships to help streamline the value chain, she says.

The idea for the business and the strategy came to Bulmash when she went to South Africa with the intent to see if she could combine wine with development work. “As it turns out, there was – and quite a bit from an agricultural perspective,” she says. Bulmash points to a certain misperception, that consumers disassociate wine as being an agricultural commodity. “But, it is a very important one, particularly to South Africa,” she says, noting that in 2009 it was responsible for 2% of the country’s overall GDP – and she believes it’s been growing year over year since then. Bulmash also says that consumers these days, like millennials, are “more about discovery and stories and artisanally-produced products”, things that the winemakers working with Wine for the World essentially embody.

Creating Empowerment

Bulmash cites one example. Ntsiki Biyela is South Africa’s first female black winemaker, who in 1998 won a winemaking scholarship by South African Airlines, despite never having tasted wine. Nor had she ever been outside of her home in the Eastern province of KwaZulu Natal. In 2009, Biyela won accolades as the local Woman Winemaker of the Year. Bulmash focuses her attention away from herself as being a female entrepreneur to women like Biyela and American Helen Keplinger, with whom Wine for the World also works. Keplinger received a Master’s degree from the University of California, Davis, in Enology. After graduating, she soon entered the winemaking world, working as an assistant in a couple of boutique wine cellars. In 2004, she moved to Spain to start a winery for a group of partners who had purchased a vineyard in the country. In 2005, Keplinger returned to Napa Valley to work at the Kenzo Estate, and as a consultant to a few other wineries. She is focusing on her own label of boutique wine at present. Bulmash emphasized the importance of the business launching with these two women among its winemakers, seven in total (the rest are all men). Aside from their talent, they challenge the norms and expectations of who makes wine and where it comes from. “If people think differently about wine as a product [there can be a great deal of] opportunity…really the story we are telling is much more about the people and the opportunity. It’s to create a story about wine but also to create that empowerment,” she says.

In the immediate term, Bulmash is excited to get Wine for the World’s wines onto store shelves and continue spreading the word this holiday season, having recently received a round of financing. Looking ahead to 2015, Wine for the World plans starting its next vintage between both Biyela and Keplinger. There are also definitive plans to enter into new regions – scaling to Latin America and eyeing such markets as Moldova. Bulmash notes “the quality and the opportunity to make a difference is there”. This is the greater underlying meaning to the Wine for the World brand name.