Hotei Wines was founded on our own passion for great wines. When we travelled overseas, we always returned with cases of wine, and luggage that clanked with bottles. We shared with friends, and they wanted more.
Our small team is diverse. Bill Campbell grew up in Geyserville, California where his family's B&B overlooks the vineyards. He's a lifelong Zinfanatic, who by day is the yen-fixed-income strategist for JP Morgan in Tokyo.
Melanie Drane is a political scientist by training. She gave up her dissertation in favor of writing about wine. Catch her wine tips on Thursdays in The Daily Yomiuri.
Finally, there's Basho, our short-legged, but majestic dachshund mascot,
who mutters haiku after a few sips of wine. Our team is committed to the
pursuit of great wines, and wine, food, and travel adventures. Contact us
at our e-mail address: office@hoteiwines.com
The Hotei Wines team is committed to the principle that companies should give back to their communities. As a team of partners from both the US and Japan, we feel that our community involvement be international in spirit.
As a founding tenet of Hotei Wines, we decided to donate 1% of all sales to humanitarian causes. Our donations are based on a percentage of sales rather than profits because, for at least the first few years following our launch, we expect to re-invest our funds into the business, meaning that our net "profit" at the end of the year is zero. Thus, donating a percentage of profits wouldn't make sense.
Our first award will be to Refugees International Japan (RIJ), a Tokyo-based charity that Melanie has been involved with for many years. RIJ is a non-profit, all-volunteer organization, composed of Japanese and international volunteers working together. It was founded in 1979, with the goal of helping to restore the physical and mental well-being, as well as the dignity, of refugees through emergency, health, and education projects in refugee camps around the world. The organization also seeks to provide information and create awareness of refugee crises through a variety of fundraising events in Japan
RIJ targets projects where its funds will make the greatest difference, in areas where less government aid is available, or in cases where the media spotlight has faded, and therefore, public concern has dwindled as well. RIJ emphasizes programs that prepare and give refugees hope for a return to self-sufficiency through skills training and income-generating projects in their communities. It currently funds programs in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and the former Yugoslavia. Because RIJ is a voluntary organization, it is able to keep its overhead and administrative costs to less than 5% of its overall budget. This means that donations go where they count, to the people who most need help-- rather than being consumed in office expenses.
One of the most important sources of RIJ's funding for their refugee projects is the sale of holiday and greeting cards that feature art by Japanese artists. To order the cards, make a donation to RIJ, or tlearn more about its fundraising events and the projects it supports, please contact the RIJ office by fax or mail at: Refugees International Japan, c/o Shell Japan Ltd., Daiba Frontier Building, 13 F, 2-3-2 Daiba, Minato-ku, Tokyo 135, Japan. Fax: +81-3-5500-3094/Tel.: +81-3-5500-3093 (for inquiries in Japanese or English, weekdays from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.).
For more information about RIJ's US sister organization, Refugees International (which works in a mutually-supportive relationship with RIJ, but has a more advocacy-orientated role), please click here.
To register a charity for consideration in our grants program, or for more information on the Hotei Philanthropic Fund, please email Melanie.