Food & Drink Awards 2019

Page 28 www.lux-review.com LUXlife 2019 Food & Drink Awards IWS Srl: Best Wine Shipping Company 2019 - Italy Maintaining a friendly approach certainly comes easily here and is undoubtably why they are a success in their field. They also offer an incredibly personalised service, specifically tailored to the client they’re selling to. If you need 24-hour, door-to-door delivery, IWS is happy to handle the delivery process for you. They’ll organise the finest couriers to take care of your precious bottle, they’ll arrange for it to be temperature con- trolled if need be. They’ll even personalise the packaging so it’s bespoke to you, and you alone. What might surprise you is that the charming image of a quiet vineyard hasn’t really changed. For the most part, wine producers are quite small operations and prefer their own traditional way of operating. This isn’t for lack of trying on the part of IWS, though to limited success. This might be for the best. With the worldwide shipping industry seemingly set to apply blockchain cryptography, without groups like IWS, it may well become impossible to get a bottle of your favourite Brunello. Fortunately, they have the matter well in hand and are already exploring various possibilities and solutions. Imagine sitting in a hilltop village in Northern Italy. You gently open a bottle of Barolo, the grapes grown in the patchwork pattern of vineyards weaving their way down the valley. You take a sip, just to make sure that it’s of the highest quality, and then get down to the business of shipping wine to everywhere in the world… This is the life of IWS, a shipping company based in La Morra, just between Alba and Barolo that is dedicated to foodstuffs but specialises in wine. Wine is the lifeblood of the market, with deliveries headed everywhere from Tucson to Tuscany. Dealing with wine producers on one hand, and wine sellers on the other, they get the best perspective on how wine should really be handled. The business might be small, with only around twenty people employed, but it has managed to gain subsidiaries in San Francisco, New York, Verona and Tuscany. These offices are strategically located; Verona is the home of Amarone della Valpolicella, one of the most exported Italian wines; Tuscany is - together with Langhe- the most famous wine region in Italy, though IWS’s subsidiary is based nearby to Bolgheri, which is the cradle of the so-called world famous “Supertuscan” wines. Meanwhile, their US subsidiaries are ideally located for swift distribution to key North American markets. However, from the outset, it is clear that IWS’s success is down to one crucial element of the business: client service. “We cherish the friendly relationship we have with most of our customers. When we meet, we often uncork a bottle together and have a nice time. The business talk turns into small talk and the customer/supplier relationship turns into friendship. Of course, while still maintaining a professional outlook, which is a big focus for us.” - Salvatore Monetta, Owner