“This is a very cut-throat business,” Milliken notes, adding that there are more than 500,000 wine labels in the world. Moreover, PengWine’s price point is more than double the export price of the average Chilean wine. “People say to me, ‘You’re so expensive. How are we going to sell your wine?’” To that, he replies, “Wine is not bought. Wine is sold.” The No 1-selling wine on almost every wine list tends to be the second-cheapest wine, notes Milliken. “That is where you want to be if you can. But if you can’t, you need to have a personal impact on the people selling the wine,” he says, referring to wait staff, sommeliers and people in the wine trade. This is where he hopes PengWine’s whimsical association with Chile’s sea-loving birds and its artisanal approach to winemaking help it stand apart. Milliken, who trained and worked as a chef before moving to the wine business, handcrafts every blend along with Eyzaguirre. “Max and I have very similar palates and expectations of what we want to make,” he says. They experiment with different grape ratios, then decide what goes into each blend. For example, they added a dash of Sauvignon Blanc to Chardonnay and found that the crisp, dry varietal added zip to the Chardonnay — a departure from the current style which leans towards a heavy oak finish. Incidentally, Milliken recently discovered he is allergic to oak.
The brand is looking to build relationships with the people who sell its wines and the people who drink them. To do that, it is taking the app route. “I had this dream for over a year,” Milliken says about developing a digital platform that would connect end-users and middlemen directly with wine producers. However, he was held back by the cost of building it from scratch. Serendipity stepped in. Milliken was supplying PengWine to a friend’s corporate event, and there he met an executive from Authenticateit, a company that sells software to track and trace a product’s authenticity from producer to consumer. Together, they customised a system that attaches a unique data matrix code to each PengWine bottle and an app that enables consumers and tradespeople to check whether the wine is fake, by scanning the barcode. It also offers drinkers information on each product, such as tasting notes, and gives PengWine an avenue to reward the wait staff who promote their wines. At about 13.5 cents a bottle, the system would seem a cost-effective way to boost visibility along the supply chain and gain consumer trust. Given the serious issue of counterfeit wine, it is a wonder that more wine brands have not latched on to it. A new film out this year called Sour Grapes depicts the rise and fall of wine dealer Rudy Kurniawan, who was convicted in the US of what is believed to be the largest case of fine wine fraud in history. Kurniawan, an Indonesian, bought prodigious amounts of less expensive wines and relabelled them as prestigious and rare wines, such as Domaine de la Romanée-Conti from Burgundy, and then sold them to big-name wine collectors and at auctions. Best place to grow grapes
Milliken, who is from the US, did not set out to be a wine producer. From a young age — six, according to his book White or Red, It’s All in Your Head — he has had a passion for food and culinary arts. During his first year at the Pennsylvania Institute of Culinary Arts, he took a semester in wine appreciation. However, he was disappointed to find he did not like a single wine he tried. “I was over wine as fast as I was introduced to it,” he writes. After graduating, he worked as a chef in restaurants and hotels, as well as a personal chef. In his mid-20s, his girlfriend took up a job in Chile. He had never left the US and could not speak Spanish. But he relocated with her and discovered new frontiers for agronomy as well as a fresh respect for wine. Chile’s unusual combination of geography and climate has given rise to a varied mosaic of terroir, much of which is rich in minerals. “When I first went there, I was shocked to see kiwi fruits larger than my fist, corn and carrots larger than my arm and celery that was 1m long,” Milliken recalls. As he sees it, Chile is scientifically the best place on the planet to grow grapes. The country has one of the longest grape-growing seasons — ideal for the finicky Carménère grape, which needs a growing period of up to 60 days longer than other red varietals. Yields at Chilean vineyards are also often significantly higher than in other wine-growing countries.
