World enough and wine

IT starts as an idle thought while navigating the twisting roads of Provence, or at the first glimpse of the terraced hillsides of Spain's Priorat. For some, simply staring at the constantly expanding selection of Italian wines in a favorite wine store brings it on. There is a pause and a smile as the wine lover dreams about a life spent tootling along the wine world's less traveled roads, sitting down to fabulous meals with world-class winemakers, taking home exceptional discoveries -- the wine importer's life, yes, that would be a sweet life.

It is a fantasy that proved irresistible to four Californians -- Emily Weissman and Stephan Schindler of Winemonger, an importer of Austrian wines; Betty Dunbar, whose Vinalia Imports focuses on bringing under-appreciated French wines to California; and Brian Larky, whose company, Dalla Terra Winery Direct, acts as sole U.S. agent for selected Italian wineries.

Each has carved a niche in the rough-and-tumble international wine business. But survival isn't guaranteed. Importers operate on tight budgets and have to work their way through a slew of regulations as they coordinate trucks, boats, trains and planes to move wine around the world -- and then there is the challenge of selling unknown wines.

Yet Southern California's expanding wine community is enriched by these intrepid souls. Not only do they bring in bottles that wouldn't be available here otherwise, but they also help keep prices in check. As independents, they survive by undercutting the traditional three-tier system that dictates hefty mark-ups at each stage of the process by importers, distributors and retailers.

"It's been terrifying," Weissman, 35, says. "And hilarious." She and husband Schindler, 38, have invested everything they own in Winemonger, a company that imports, distributes and retails Austrian wines. "When we started, all we knew was that we both loved wine," Weissman says. Everything else, she says, they learned the hard way.

Weissman and Schindler met as students at the American Film Institute, but they bonded over the bottles of wine they shared each evening at dinner. Weissman, the daughter of a wine-loving Stanford University professor, has been swirling, sniffing and sipping wine as long as she can remember. And Schindler, whose family owns a tiny vineyard in Vienna, loves the wines of his homeland.