“Part of the reason why we get such great results from this grape is that here in Tarija, the soil is not so great,” says Soderbergh. “The grape has to struggle a great deal to survive, and therefore develops a unique character. And considering its character, I find it so interesting that this grape has traveled a long way to get to this place that isn’t very hospitable toward it, and still found its ultimate expression. It’s a kind of a funny and weird narrative of this grape finding the perfect place for it to be, which turns out to be not a very nice place for it. And yet it continues to deliver what it couldn’t deliver literally anywhere else in the world.”

There are about 1,000 singani producers in Bolivia’s wine growing region. The most successful and acclaimed among them is Casa Real, with whom Mr. Soderbergh teamed up to help blend and experiment with his own label, Singani 63. When Soderbergh began this journey, he says that it was critical to find the right people to help him understand the process of creating the drink he fell in love with while filming Che in 2007. At the time, his Bolivian casting director brought a bottle to him in Madrid. Soderbergh says he instantly fell in love with singani and spent the next couple of years having it smuggled to him wherever the spirit could not be imported.

Casa Real helped Soderbergh understand the complexities that formulate a well made singani, and explained all the adjustments that local wine producers make to create vineyards, such as trucking in millions of tons of earth and constantly testing the soil of Tarija’s arid, inhospitable lands. The Casa Real family, for instance, approached Israel and South Africa, two countries with considerably arid environments and challenging landscapes, to advise them on irrigation solutions. Casa Real’s singani production is the wine region’s most technologically advanced, employing French copper stills and Italian-designed machinery that allows them and Soderbergh to produce the most refined singani on the market.

Over the next six months, Soderbergh plans to bring his Singani 63 to places like Santa Cruz, Bolivia’s second largest city, because Casa Real wants to test the market there. Given that singani is such a well established and beloved national drink and a part of Bolivia’s cultural heritage, Santa Cruz might offer some insight into how people are consuming singani, and how that might translate to the US consumer. Soderbergh and his team are also learning singani cocktail culture, in what ways the people of Bolivia’s capital, La Paz, are playing with singani, and inventing some of their own signature drinks too. It’s a primer for learning what customers find interesting about singani and what the limits of their culinary tastes might be. Soderbergh is essentially learning the position of his brand in Bolivia and how that can inform his market approach in the US and beyond.

“People obviously like wines and liquors from places they know, like from Italy and France and Napa Valley,” says Soderbergh. “And my impression is also that, in the last 10-15 years, people have been making a lot of good wines and spirits from all over the place, different from where we normally think of a good red wine growing for example. Not necessarily in the iconic valleys of the world that we associate with great wines. Recently somebody gave me a bottle of red that they made and it was great. Thankfully, I think this snootiness factor is starting to diminish.”