Darius Anderson, 1st California Wine Symposium in Havana

Darius Anderson first came to Cuba in 1996 and fell head over heels in love with the island nation from the very beginning. Now he’s come back to attend the 1st California Wine Symposium in Havana, a two-day event held in the nation’s capital to showcase the very best of Californian wineries. He sat down with Caribbean News Digital in this exclusive interview.

Why did you decide to organize this event and foster the exchange between Californian wineries and Cuban professionals and sommeliers?

I came here in 1996 and as soon as I got here I fell in love with Cuba, the Cuban people, the Cuban culture, the topography, everything from music to rum and art. As I grew my relationship with Cuba, I had an interest in making sure that people came down here and understood what the real Cuba was and how Cubans actually view the Americans, because there was a general sense that Cubans didn’t like the Americans and that’s not what I found when I came here.

Today, we’ve brought over 1,700 people, since 2000, from all walks of life, business, entertainment, the movie industry, agriculture, the wine business. We’ve been growing over the years.

I have my own winery and I’m very active in the high-end food business. We have a cooking school, we have a catering company, we’re in hotels, we’re in a variety of different things and I really felt that there was a need to go ahead and bring more wine to Cuba, not just for tourists, but also I felt that there’d be a market for Cubans. Many of my friends that I’ve known here now for 20 years love having a great bottle of wine with their meal.

I wanted to make sure that I could go ahead and do that. In 2006 we started talking to government officials on both sides, in the United States and in Cuba, about how to go ahead and do that.

We’ve also felt that it’s important not just to come down here and think that you’re going to make money, but there has to be a reverse exchange. So, two years ago we put together 20 sommeliers, we paid for them to come to the United States. They spent four days in Napa, three days in Sonoma, and we educated them on all about the wine industry. We showed them the wineries, we let them dine with some of the biggest names in the wine industry, like Michael Mondavi, some of the biggest brands and it was a huge success. All of them said to me: “Now we have to bring the winemakers to Cuba”.             

Two year ago I started on this concept, building the symposium and with the help of many people in the room – Fernando Fernandez, Elsa and many others – we put together the format. Then we sent it up to the Napa Valley vintners, Sonoma Valley vintners and the Wine Institute. We got tremendous interest.

To give you an idea: there is a hundred winemakers here today, there was a total of about 250 people that were on our list. Because of the lack of hotel rooms in Havana, we had to go ahead and tell them no. If we were able to get hotel rooms, we would’ve had 251 makers that would’ve been here.

I think that we’re very close to being able to sign a deal both with the Cuban government as well as with the American government to be able to work out all the details.

Have you already devised a strategy to attract the Cuban market?

Yes, we have. It’s a vertically integrated strategy. We know that tourists love our wines. Canadians are the number one tourists here and they are the biggest consumers of Californian wines. So we know that they are going to buy when they are here, they’ll recognize the brands.

However, what we want in our dream is to go ahead and have Cubans be able to afford Californian wines, be able to incorporate them into their dining experience at restaurants, home. The more tastings we do with the general public, the better it is.

Fernando Fernandez is doing an annual education program and we will start in Havana, then we’ll go to Santiago, Camaguey, Cienfuegos, throughout the island, and do chefs. The chefs will do pairings. It’s important to work with the sommeliers in all these areas. We’ll go ahead and do public offerings so that the general public can understand how important it is to integrate food with wine.

How about pairing with habanos?

My wine, I make it specifically to stand up to a great Cuban cigar. I’ve worked a lot with Fernando Fernandez on blends and we think, between rum and cigars, that there is a wonderful opportunity.

Fernando is working on a new book that I will be the publisher of. We’ll talk about pairing different cigars with different wines. Many people think that the only wine you can pair with a cigar is a really heavy red. We don’t believe that. Fernando and I believe that you can combine it with a Sauvignon Banc, Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, and Zinfandel; and have people understand that to complement a great meal you can end or start with a great Cuban cigar.

So, you’ll be around for the Habano Festival.

Yes. I’ve been active in Habano Festivals. There is a young humidor maker, who I think is the greatest humidor maker in the world: Jose Ernesto Aguilera. I have all the rights in the United States for his product. We’ve been selling his humidors in the Unites States. Not with cigars, only as art pieces because that meets the letter of the law in the United States. We’ve had tremendous success.

This is the 50th anniversary of Cohiba and his factory is building the Cohiba humidor for the auction. So I’ll be here with him during that time period.