Tanja Turunen have been fully embracing the Italian lifestyle and loving Italian gastronomy and wine.
Although Tanja always loved Italian wine, she really got the chance to get to know closely our culture by chance in Tampere.
In fact, 15 years ago she was living in Tampere city centre with her husband, a baby and hosting her sister coming back from India in a typical Finnish house, equipped with sauna.
One afternoon, around easter time her sister was waiting for the bus, and she got to chat with an Italian couple visiting Finland. The couple was looking for a place to have a sauna.
So, she decided to invite them over to Tanja’s place to have a sauna, relax in the public spa of house and have a beer together and some special Finnish easter food.
Since then, the Italians Maurizio and Natasha have been guided around the city and bonded with Tanja and her family, starting a long-lasting friendship.
Since that random meeting, something special started and Tanja and her family deeply connected with Italian lifestyle, gastronomy, wine, and people. In fact, still today they travel to meet each other families and support each other through life practicalities and work.
Going backwards and forwards from Italy to Finland, Tanja use to buy wine presents for friends back home. For this reason, she thought to specialize more in the import of wine.
So, she applied her knowledge of marketing and got Maurizio to support her with the legal aspects of the import.
Initially Tanja started her small business in Estonia, due to the Finnish monopoly. She was selecting best quality sustainable wine for the small business together with an Estonian businesswoman.
After few years she managed to expand her business and focus on the Ho.Re.Ca. sector and importing the 85% of wine form Italy and focusing on European wine production.
Tanja and her team got to know more about Italian wine and lifestyle bonding with Italian producers, especially with Cincinnato. She met Cincinnato through Le Donne del Vino and Michele Shah’s speed tasting events. Afterwards she had the chance to connect with people setting a sustainable business and strong relationships with Cincinnato. Schedules and task have to work smoothly but a healthy relationship between producers and retailer is as well important.
The wine production has to be sustainable and have to have a story to tell and hopefully the product has to be identifiable for a brand and a style. Tanja choose Cincinnato for her import business for all the reason above. In addition, Cincinnato gives her the chance to offer to her customers something different. Her customers have never tasted before: indigenous grapes such as Nero Buono and Bellone make a good selling point.
In conclusion, for Tanja having the best quality sustainable wines with a story behind matters. Tanja wants to bring to the customers the atmosphere that comes with a specific wine, relaxing moments to meet the need of who she calls “wine enjoyers”. She brings customers and producers together in special tasting events, to meet and have an experience able to create empathy and bonds. More than before, new Finnish generations drink wine and they join events to get to know more about what they are drinking and where the products come from as well get familiar with the Italian lifestyle, wine, and food culture.
Red wine is the most popular in Finland, it makes a good matching with the cold winter and the Finnish traditional dishes, which are mainly based on meat, such as game. Even Tanja loves red, preferring Kora, the full body red wine, 100% made with Nero Buono grape among Cincinnato’s bottle. She would pair it with game, lamb, or reindeer.
Tanja would match with Kora a Finnish traditional reindeer dish: a stew of thin slices of reindeer vegetables, a drop of wine, olive oil/or butter and cranberries. Surely it is the ideal wine pairing to enjoy some time with people and family embracing the sense of togetherness part of the Italian lifestyle.
