BUSINESS PROFILE
LANI GERING
The Moldova Countryside
From Moldova to Marlboro Pike
Brian and Cristina
The Marlboro Pike Warehouse. Below: Brands imported by Harbor Wines
4 | September 2021
I
t was a pleasure to meet Cristina Tufts and her husband Brian at the Harbor Wines warehouse on Marlboro Pike on a hot afternoon in late August. I was greeted with a very refreshing glass of Italian Prosecco and they proceeded to tell me their story. It is a good one. Harbor Wines isn’t exactly the typical business that we profile since they are an importer and distributor instead of a retail or service based entity but I was very taken with Cristina’s story after “texting” with her making arrangements to donate some cleaning materials for the warehouse. She and Brian live in the Harbor and I met her virtually through a mutual Facebook page. She is an amazing person. Cristina is from a small village in the equally small country of Moldova in Eastern Europe. While it is a relatively poor country, it is known for its fertile soil that is perfect for growing grapes. Thus, making wine is a large industry. In fact, Moldovans have been producing wine for literally 50 centuries. That is a longggg time. Cristina
Christina Tufts grew up drinking wine on a daily basis - a custom of most European countries. It was at a very young age when she grew to appreciate wines and the nuances they all have. You could say it was “in her blood”. She is a very well educated young woman with two Masters Degrees and she speaks 5 languages fluently. Her initial career path was in linguistics and she was headed for a job with the Federal government when it was discovered she couldn’t pass the top security clearance requirements because she had daily contact with a “foreign national”…
her mother lived with them. Even though they both had been through the rigors of immigrating from Moldova to the USA and jumped through all of the hoops, her mother was considered a threat. “In retrospect,” she tells me, “it was probably meant to be as it was a catalyst to changing my career path.” Her husband and “partner in wine”, Brian, is a Lt. Colonel stationed at Fort Belvoir and is the one responsible for getting Cristina to make the a career out of importing and marketing the wines of Moldova. They told me a fun story that they refer to as “the popcorn story”. On one of Brian’s visits to Moldova to see Cristina, he took her on a date that ended up in noshing on popcorn and wine! See, I told you they like their wine in Moldova. Anyway, the bottle of wine that Cristina opened was a 1989 vintage. Brian, even though he didn’t consider himself as a wine connoisseur, thought it unusual to open such an old vintage thinking that since it was well aged, it would be expensive. Cristina looked BUSINESS PROFILE > PAGE 5
Old Town Crier
