Importer & Distributor of (mostly) Wine
Thanks for visiting our new website! We hope the pictures and descriptions within make you thirsty.
Ocean South Imports is essentially a new(ish) company. While founded in Wilmington, NC in 1998 by Lee Scanlon of the popular End of the Vine label, the business was purchased by Steve Sommerville in May of 2018 and then merged with Rabelais Wines in early 2019. The company has undergone a renewed focus on portfolio diversification.
It all started back in 1999 when Steve was a young waiter in Illinois. He ended up winning a trip to Italy as a Wine Ambassador and fell in love with wine, especially Italian wines. While working for nearly fifteen years in the insurance industry, Steve always had in mind to get back into the wine and restaurant business. And then on a return trip to Italy with his lovely wife, Yolanda, they turned off the GPS one day and simply wandered the remote villages in Toscana to the breathtakingly gorgeous regions surrounding Lago di Garda. Stopping in on local, family-owned wineries along the way, his passion for wine was reawakened.
A delicious Vinho Verde Rosè purchased at a small wine shop in Raleigh that he and his wife had enjoyed led Steve to Ocean South Imports and he began selling for them part-time while still holding down the insurance business. The business went up for sale a year later and he rolled the dice and went for it. Five plus years later, he is now joined by his wife of twenty seven years, Yolanda, who is also a Neonatal Nurse in the Raleigh area. Yolanda hails from Mexico and offers a fresh perspective on the portfolio as well as a no-nonsense manner of dealing with the challenges of running a small business.
The new version of Ocean South Imports remains true to its predecessor's focus on high-quality, interesting wines that express their terroir and undergo minimal manipulation. Ocean South is proud to work with wineries and importers who are exemplary when representing quality and promoting strong integrity and ethics. Most importantly, Ocean South is a business run by employees who are like family and take pride in what they do. The overarching hiring philosophy of the company is "no jerks allowed," and so far, it's worked out well!
Among the countries represented in Ocean South's portfolio are: Mexico, Slovenia, France, Germany, Portugal, South Africa, Spain, Italy, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Moldova, Argentina, New Zealand, Austria, and the United States of America.
Please peruse the portfolio and feel free to contact any one of the Ocean South Imports sales representatives in your area. Ocean South prides itself with having a friendly, honest, dependable, and knowledgeable sales force who can guide you through the portfolio.
