Vinigalicia’s is a story of growth. If you want, transformation. But, above all, roots, in the literal and metaphorical sense. And it is not easy, especially when you are an SME and also a family business. And when you settle in the place where you were born, far from the madding crowd. There where time seems to have stopped, but not its people, accustomed to working hard for what they love the most: the land. Because Vinigalicia is, as they express in their brand, a winery family.
The seed of Vinigalicia takes us back to 1940 -year up, year down- when the family of Juan Luis Méndez, its current CEO and third generation, ran Casa Penouzos, in Chantada (Lugo). His grandmother, Maruja Otero, cooked, and his grandfather, Manuel Méndez, bought local wine that he later resold, as did his father later. His childhood memories are impregnated with that particular smell of barrels, of summers in which Juan Luis was the happiest child when they sent him one thing: help in the winery.
It was in 1976 when his father and uncle created VinÃcola de Chantada SA for the production and sale of bulk wines. From there, they began to bottle wine without a denomination, until Juan Luis arrived, in 1996. “We went buying wineries, first here, at home, a winery with the Ribeira Sacra Denomination, then Valdeorras, Rias Baixas and so on until we had five Galician denominationsâ€, explains Juan Luis. Internationalization was just around the corner.
“We were growing and expanding countries. Now we are at 34 and in four of the five continents, which represent a third of our turnoverâ€, explains Méndez, who does not hesitate to affirm that “wine runs through his veinsâ€. “I always imagined myself here, evolving the project, because one thing is how we were born and another thing is what we areâ€, he qualifies. For this he was trained, studying Economics in Santiago. The rest was done on a day-to-day basis in the company, “which is what really teaches youâ€.
His best teacher: “crisesâ€. “Especially that of 2008, 2009 and 2010, years in which the obligation to move things forward made us wake up,” recalls Juan Luis, CEO of a company that has not stopped evolving for 80 years and that in 2022 was recognized with the Pyme Award of the province of Lugo, granted by Banco Santander and the Chamber of Commerce. He is aware that what he is dealing with is more than just a company: it is a legacy. “I am one more link before the next generation and proud to make it possible in the rural worldâ€, he qualifies.
His love for the project is perceived in every sentence and reaches its best expression when, to assess the magnitude of Vinigalicia, instead of counting workers, he does it in families, which are already “more than 60”. 2018 was a turning point in his career. They inaugurated their new plant and it was their largest economic investment (about 6 million euros), a difficult, courageous step, but necessary to avoid missing the boat. “We did it, and consciously in the short term, to be able to go from small to medium,†he explains.
A decision that he made together with his team and that responded to a dilemma: do we continue to grow or do we settle? They opted for the former and that, evidently, stressed -and a lot- his treasury. “It was hard, but it was the way to continue professionalizing ourselves, to have an organization chart, a function chart, to have protocols, models, which we are still applying and improving today, taking steps.” Because, Juan Luis insists, “we are not yet medium, we continue in that change, because in the middle there was a pandemic.”
Along the way, Banco Santander has been there. “The relationship with the bank goes back many years. They are always there for our investments and our growth, Banco Santander is a bank close to SMEs, we share a lot with themâ€. It was the bank itself that motivated Vinigalicia to apply for the SME of the Year Award for the province of Lugo and won. “It was a pride. It is a recognition of the people we are, and those who were, our suppliers and customers. It is a recognition of everyone’s work, of their trajectoryâ€.
Having a long-term and restless vision is, in fact, your best lifeline, especially when you consider the number of businesses that have fallen by the wayside with each onslaught that this century has delivered. In a country of SMEs (in Spain they are more than 99% of the business fabric according to data from the Ministry of Labour), standing still has a very high price: not surviving. Juan Luis knows it, he has seen it around him: “There is a tendency not to make tough decisions and to get carried away by it, this has always been done that way.”
Immobility is a burden in the rural world where recent years have been especially “demanding, competitive, quick to change and tight on margins”. There is only one direction if what you want is to survive: grow. But doing so is not easy, especially in the agricultural world. For SMEs, having aid and financing with which to adapt and update to be more competitive is key, but this aid and resources are not always available to them, nor are they proportional to the role they have in society.
To respond to this need, in 2022 Banco Santander has allocated 4,200 million euros to companies in the sector, 11% more if we compare it with 2021. The contracting of the I D I Agro Loan or long-term loans for the transformation of farms to more profitable crops, with a focus on digitization and sustainability, have been some of the most demanded products during the year by the more than 425,000 clients with whom, like Vinigalicia, the bank has in this sector.
A commitment that, in addition, in 2022 has been reinforced with the launch of the Agro Smart Fund, a financing channel endowed with 500 million euros for those companies in the sector that want to expand their investments and undertake new growth and transformation projects. A necessary investment to maintain the valuable, and increasingly scarce, businesses located in rural Spain, where, as Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa well explained in the novel ‘El Gatopardo’: “If we want everything to continue as it is, it is necessary that everything change.”
