About Us

The AWM Team

Austral Wine Merchants (AWM) was founded in 2001 to get promising small "boutique" wineries in Argentina and Chile to market in the United States. We have assembled a small team of dedicated individuals focused on providing products of excellence at competitive prices.

Alejandro (Alex) Walters

Founder, President and CEO

Alex's interest in the wine sector began in 1995 while undertaking a Ph.D. in Development Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology(MIT), in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His focus on topics of successful industrial restructuring in Latin America led him to Argentina and Chile where he conducted a considerable amount of fieldwork. Over two years he carried out extensive interviewing at a number of promising small wineries that were making quality wines, but that had as yet not tackled export markets. This led him to believe that there was a potential role for a US-based importer that knew these companies well and could bring them to market. In so doing, it would provide some genuine alternatives to US consumers who were swamped by mass-produced varietals.

After graduation, in 2001 Alex founded AWM and moved temporarily to Argentina to develop his network of suppliers. He returned to the US in 2002 and settled in Atlanta, Georgia. He is currently working with distributors and retailers in this state and in New York. His goal for AWM is to become a nationally-recognized representative of the best wine South American small-scale producers have to offer. Alex is a native speaker of both English and Spanish, and is conversant in Portuguese. He is married, with three young children.

Carlos Catania and Silvia Avagnina

Agricultural Engineers and Enological Consultants

Two renowned Argentine consultants, they conduct AWM's wine evaluations and quality control tests on demand. They head the enological laboratory at the publicly- and privately-funded INTA-Luján de Cuyo research and extension agency in Mendoza, Argentina. Catania and Avagnina are well known nationally and internationally for their studies on varietal typicity, agroclimatic influences, and their sensorial effects on wine. One of their most important contributions to the Argentine wine industry has been to determine the microclimates and "terroirs" that are most sympathetic to each varietal.