The big idea came in December 2020 when Cristina and Marco Doria decided to start a wine importing business together. However, it was not until April 2021 they could actually kick off their venture: Cristina was still working, and Marco had to creatively find a way to come to the United States when COVID prevented foreigners from entering the country. For two weeks Marco did a lot of reading on the laws and regulations of wine importing all under the Panamanian sun.

Reunited in Maryland, we dived into the world of alcohol logistics and learned the legacy of Prohibition and the Three-Tier System. We also made a lot of connections with people who work in the industry and listened to their advice. In between reading and researching, there were visits to wine stores to identify suitable places for the type of wine we planned to import.

When we separated in May, we both had specific tasks to complete: Marco finding potential producers in Italy and Cristina setting up the company and getting the required permits. But the reading, attending webinars, and making phone calls didn’t stop. The days turned into weeks and then months until we realized we had come a long way and were ready to make the final push to select the initial wineries whose wine would make up our first shipment.

While waiting on the necessary federal and state alcohol permits, we traveled for over two months together all over Italy visiting producers and tasting their wines. Fun but exhausting, the trip took us to Abruzzo, Puglia, Basilicata, Campania, Sicilia, Sardegna, Piemonte, Valle d’Aosta, Veneto, and Friuli-Venezia Giulia. It also gave us the opportunity to spend some time in Torino with family and friends enjoying food and wine like the old times.

It was not until January 2022 that we made the final selection of which wines were bound to the United States. The following months were spent mostly on Google Meet as Marco was in Italy and Cristina in Maryland preparing for the first shipment: selecting (and paying) the producers, getting the wine labels approved, and arranging the logistics for transporting the wine from ten different locations in Italy all the way to Essex, MD where the warehouse of the distributor we had chosen is located.

During this time, our knowledge of pallets preparation, ocean freight booking, customs-brokerage paperwork, warehousing contracts, and transportation arrangements grew exponentially. Acronyms such as COLA, BOL, LCL, and CBMA became part of our daily vocabulary. And when we thought everything was done, the waiting began: waiting for the pallets to be picked up from the wineries and taken to the Livorno port, waiting for the container to be filled, waiting for the ship to arrive, waiting for the ship to load, waiting for the ship to depart, waiting for the ship to cross the Atlantic, waiting for the ship to dock, waiting for the wine to clear customs, waiting for the wine to be transported, waiting for…

Marco arrived in the US in early April, but the ship carrying our wine didn’t arrive in Port Elizabeth, NJ until May 1st. We celebrated the milestone without realizing that many others were needed before we could start selling the wine. Who would have thought that the wine could take longer to get from New York to Maryland than from Italy to the US? It was not until mid-June when we were truly in business, only a couple of weeks before Marco’s flight back to Italy.