The biggest market for Luxembourg booze isn’t Luxembourg. It’s the United States, or more specifically, Wisconsin and Ohio. And the importer who started importing all sorts of Luxembourgish booze discovered this by accident.
Kate Ansay, operations manager for Ansay International, got into the booze importing business by accident. The story starts with her grandfather, who grandfather started an insurance business for Luxembourgish farmers out of Port Washington, WI, and over time, the company evolved to also incorporate a real estate business for this rural area, about an hour north of Milwaukee, and he also worked with the Luxembourgish American Cultural Society in Belgium, WI, which runs a Luxembourg Fest every August in Belgium, WI.
George Lentz, who is the ninth generation owner of Bofferding Brewery in Luxembourg, attended Miami University in Ohio, which has a sister school in Luxembourg. He’s also on the school’s board of directors, and there, he found out about the Luxembourg Fest. “He found out about the festival, and he said to my dad (also on the board) ‘We’re the national beer for Luxembourg so you should definitely bring in my beer to the festival,’” Ansay says. “My dad helped bring in the beer for the 2014 festival, and it sold out in three hours.”
At that point, as beer lovers kept coming back for beer that was sold out, they realized they were on to something. Initially, they just helped Lentz find an importer, but when things didn’t work out with that importer, Ansay and her father started importing the beer on the side, bringing over their very first shipping container of brewskis in 2015.
Fast forward to today, and Ansay International now import several brews, lots of different wines, a hard cider, a mustard and soon, a honey-based spirit Mellis. Besides the active Luxembourgish communities in Wisconsin and Ohio, their products are just weeks away from being sold in restaurants in Chicago and the Twin Cities. “There are more Luxembourgish people living in America than in the country of Luxembourg so there’s a market here,” Ansay says. “We’ve got people in Arizona, New York, Florida, Arizona and California who want our products. The goal is to get out there as soon as we can, but to grow it in a sustainable way.”
And the American market of Luxembourgish folk are passionate about their products, says Rob Ebert, marketing director. “Luxembourg is smaller than the state of Rhode Island by about 200 square miles, and it has almost the exact same population of the city of Milwaukee,” Ebert says.
“That was our opening pitch to places in Chicago and Minneapolis," he adds. "'You have ten Belgium beers on tap, and do you realize that you have a huge, Luxembourgish population within a few blocks of your establishment?’”
Ansay International isn’t the only importer of Luxembourgish alcohol, it’s the only importer of Luxembourgish products, period. “Until our company, there’s never been anything imported from Luxembourg, which is crazy to say,” Ebert says. “To this day, we’re the only company who imports anything from this country into the United States.”
Since it’s really difficult to sell booze across the country, a good indication of their sales potential is the mustard, which they just started selling on Amazon, and it’s getting rave reviews from Luxembourgers from Florida, New York, and even parts of Canada. “Luxembourgers are connecting with their heritage through a delicious condiment,” Ebert says.
Besides Americans and Canadians of Luxembourgish descent, their products are sentimental to former students at Miami University of Ohio, who studied abroad in Luxembourg, but they also have a much broader appeal. “It’s the quality of the ingredients,” Ebert says. “All the buzz words that surround how people eat – organic or farm-to-table – that’s how Luxembourgers have been eating and drinking, and that’s the only way they’ve ever done it.”
The companies that they’ve begun importing from are all small, family-run companies. They started with Bofferding, and they just signed an exclusivity contract with the brewery, which dates back to 1764, and about a year into importing, they connected with DomainesVinsmoselle, a winery cooperative of 300 small growers and the only winemaker that uses 100 percent Luxembourgish-grown grapes. Then, last year, they began importing Ramborn Cider, and soon, they’ll be importing Mellis.
“It’s too early to say if we’ll import other products,” Ebert says. “It’s really been word of mouth within Luxembourg, and then we figure out if we can work together. It’s a pretty wild story.”
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeanettehurt/2018/12/24/the-biggest-market-for-luxembourg-booze-isnt-in-luxembourg/#166c4d4fb1de