It all started as a New Year's resolution...
Just Great Tastes is our name and our philosophy!
We’re a young wine import company working exclusively with boutique producers and family vineyards. We make our selections based on quality, responsible and social business practices, and micro-market share in the US. Our producers work hard to create truly beautiful wines that will resonate the efforts from the great deal of attention they give from vine to bottle.
The taste to you is that our wines are made with extreme thoughtfulness which means there’s a limit on production. We continue to find and deliver the excellence in every bottle from Just Great Taste selections.
“My tastes are simple: I am easily satisfied with the BEST!” – Winston Churchill
As a new year’s resolution, I always made it an effort to select a category to become more educated on, for the entire year. What that meant was having to say yes to every invite and opportunity that involved this subject area, for the entire year. At the conclusion of the year, one would be able to speak intelligently and collectively on the subject area. With depth and answers behind one’s words.
One year I selected…WINE!
Such a broad area of topic, clearly I knew not what I was about to enter! But oh what a year that was. In that year, I traveled to France to visit wine country, had dinners with Italian wine distributors, learned my palate for tannins and oaks, mapped my way coast to coast with corks, and enjoyed endless amounts of various varieties of the dear grape! What I came away with was, the evolved learning of wine never ends, but the bottle does! So I did what anyone would do and I started to collect. Collecting wine can be status, can be notoriety, could be for Just Great Taste!
Hence how I ventured onto the love of our company ‘JGT’.
I remember, at a dinner party a bottle of select South African wine being pulled out. I got poured a beautiful glass of liquid elegance! I found myself on the hunt for more, but finding the section in any retail shop or upon any wine list posed a challenge. Also it appeared the bottles I did find were of the highest price point, and of limited selection. So, with the thought of bringing the very best of this relative late bloomer in the USA, with the offering of various price points onto the market, enthralled me.
I met a South African who introduced me to vintners whom some held the land through generations and some bought into the dream of owning their very own farms. South Africa is a land of ever moving change. The people in South Africa certainly have their struggles but being on the farms seeing how the people come together as a family and work the land that they all share, gives me hope that peace will settle into the area. Allowing more to feel the beauty of such a breathtaking place on earth. For I see the land is the melting pot of the future success for the people to live in peace. Supporting the farms of South Africa with their delicious harvest of the wines is one of the easiest ways to deliver to you Just Great Tastes!
Joseph Sakri
Wholesale Sales
Virginia / Maryland / DC
USA
Started on July 4, 2019 JGT set out to bring in a stronger interest in South African Wine. After finding that small amounts and extremely limited selection is found in the United States for this region. Our goal is to share with wine lovers from novice to the true enthusiast the great taste and history of the wines from South Africa.
South African wines offer impressively good value, and feature styles and tastes that are food friendly, blending elegance and power. South Africa has been producing wine since the first vines were planted in the 17th century, brought by the Dutch governors of Cape Colony. At one time, the sweet wine of Constantia was the most prized in the world.
While South Africa, which is about three times the size of the state of California, is considered a New World wine region, it’s no newcomer to growing wine grapes. Grapes were first planted in 1655 and soon after, the sweet wines of Constantia (which is near Cape Town) were lauded all over Europe. Today, South African wines straddle Old World and New: the wines often smell of ripe, silky fruit, but showcase earthy flavors and finish with restraint. Because of the generally warm climate, South Africa’s red grapes in particular get very ripe and produce full, high alcohol wines.
