Introducing Ghvinos Wine Group (pronounced ga-vee-nos)
Ghvinos Wine Group is primarily a wine importer based in California, currently focused on importing fine wines from the Country of Georgia. We are also licensed to distribute in California and to sell Direct to Consumer (DTC) on-line through our e-commerce site at www.ghvinos.com. As an importer, we are limited to selling DTC to states that allow importers to sell DTC, which currently is limited to 13 US States. We are starting our DTC selling only in California to begin, and will add states as our market demand and opportunities materialize.
A little about us. We are a set of lifelong friends who started our friendship decades ago while stationed in Alaska. Chris and Bob had started with BP (British Petroleum), both having started with BP as recent college grads and hired into BP's San Francisco office. BP decided the office in San Francisco wasn't strategically located for an oil business, and both Chris and Bob were asked if they would consider transfer to the Anchorage, Alaska office that supported the burgeoning production facilities of Prudhoe Bay in Northern Alaska, deep above the arctic circle, feeding the Alaska Pipeline. Being transplants to San Francisco along with 100s of other such transplants, both were reluctant to leave the excitement of working in "The City". However, both were avid outdoors enthusiasts and during their tenure in San Francisco, each had multiple projects requiring extended trips to Anchorage and Prudhoe Bay, and both relished the notion of an assignment in the great north.
Chris and Bob met on a basketball court. There was the "City Gym" in downtown Anchorage where serious ballers showed up each evening to battle it out. It wasn't the friendliest place in town, but they soon found that their style of street ball was similar and after play got to talking. Chris had arrived in Alaska close to a year earlier than Bob, and laughed as Bob lamented on missing the San Francisco they both left behind. Chris's advice for Bob: get over it, and decide to embrace Alaska full on, or you'll be miserable. Take classes in winter arctic survival, back country skiing, mountaineering and first aid at the local University (University of Anchorage Alaska) which offered an excellent array of such classes with professional guides and instructors to learn the right way.
The result is that