Bodegas Corisca, a small family winery located between the municipalities of Tui and Salceda, has been producing organic albariño from the Rías Baixas Designation of Origin since 2009. Working with the idea of recovering this artisanal winemaking, its manager, Natalia Rodríguez, decided to go for a more specialised product when she took over from her father, who was a winegrower, had a vineyard and simply made wine for home, selling the rest of the grapes he produced on his two hectares to other larger wineries in the area.

The certification of his product as an organic product was the way to guarantee the quality of the grapes and it was clear to him that he wanted to exclusively use natural products, as well as opting for the least interventionist production process possible, with spontaneous and natural fermentations.

"We decided that going international was the best way to market a product as specialised as ours"

The idea of exporting arose almost as soon as they started, out of pure necessity, precisely because of this specialisation and the type of product they were selling, which was more highly valued abroad than in the domestic market. Although Bodegas Corisca was already operating internationally when it was selected to take part in Galicia Avanza, the accelerator promoted by the Xunta de Galicia from Tecnópole (San Cibrao das Viñas, Ourense), its participation in the programme was key to confirm certain assumptions, to confirm that internationalisation was the right way to go and, above all, to acquire knowledge that allowed them to professionalise the process and make the brand more competitive.

The accelerator helps to boost small family businesses like Natalia's: "There are many things I learned through Galicia Avanza, especially through talks and training courses on international brands or market research that we took advantage of".

Currently, Bodegas Corisca is in the process of expansion, trying to deal with the main difficulty it faces in order to increase its production: lack of space. "In our particular case, we can't increase production very much because land prices are prohibitive and harvest times are what they are. All our production is ours and we are looking for small growers who can sell to us so that we can continue growing".

Supporting the internationalisation of Galician SMEs

The Galicia Avanza programme, run by the Xunta de Galicia through the Galician Innovation Agency (Gain) and the Galician Institute for Economic Promotion (Igape), seeks to promote the access of Galician SMEs to the international market through R&D&I and sustainability.

This is an eight-month acceleration programme with personalised itineraries in areas such as market research, marketing strategy, adaptation of products and services, design and registration of brands and certifications and the strategy for accessing the market. Participating companies can also access mentoring and advice, commercial and technical training and final meetings to give them visibility.