Founded in 2007 and based in Austin, Texas, The Mark Wine Group is a family-owned, fine wine company - representing the highest quality family-owned and independent wineries and importers to hotel and restaurant companies throughout the United States. It started with a simple vision - to provide buyers a wide selection of very high quality wines to choose from and to provide a voice to those who had the ability to service National Accounts. In this way, The Mark Wine Group is the conduit for better wine selections at some of your favorite hotels and restaurants.

President & Founder Mark Gmur has twenty years domestic and international experience in the wine and hospitality industries gained during his tenure at internationally recognized hotels and restaurants from Australia, Switzerland and Hong Kong to New York and Hawai’i. In addition to his days as a wine buyer for restaurants and hotels, he served as Vice President of one Hawaii’s largest wine wholesalers for five years. This wide range of experience gave him a unique industry perspective, having worked and succeeded in several key wine industry roles: as wine buyer, wine distributor, and now, as wine consultant and wine educator.

Raised in Sydney, Australia, Mark was surrounded by the world of restaurants and hotels from a tender age, growing up around the business; eating in fine restaurants as soon as he could walk and living in hotels throughout his childhood and teen years. Mark’s father, Silvio, worked as either Food & Beverage Director or General Manager of restaurants and hotels in Sydney and Brisbane before acquiring his own two restaurants in Sydney during the nineties.

After working in one his father’s restaurants for several years, Silvio offered his son the chance of a lifetime: to go to a Hotel Management School in Switzerland, much the same as Silvio had completed himself thirty years earlier. Mark completed his Hotel Management School Les Roches degree in 1996, graduating with many honors at the top of his class and was then recruited to the AAA Five Diamond and Mobil Five Star New York Four Seasons.

Following this great experience, a new opportunity arose, at the famed Waldorf Astoria hotel. Mark completed four years of service at the hotel, first as Beverage Manager and then as Asst. Director of Banquet Services. In New York, Mark learned of his passion for wine and while studying, his next opportunity arose and moved him cross country to Hawaii. Mark was promoted to Beverage Director of the 62-acre luxury resort Hilton Waikoloa Village on the Big Island in Hawai’i. There, he was responsible for all beverage operations for the resort.

Mark’s eager passion of the beverage business led him to make contacts with one of Hawaii’s largest distributors, Better Brands, the Hawai’i branch of Young’s Market Company. During his five-year tenure as Vice President of On-Premise Sales for the entire state, Mark developed a comprehensive sales program that took Hawaii’s beverage industry by storm.

National Accounts became steadily more important and a larger channel of business in Hawai’i during his time there, and as such, became a focal point of daily business due to the large number of suppliers he was interacting with. In June of 2007, The Mark Wine Group was established out of Mark’s vision to facilitate a much wider variety of quality wines to the On-Premise National Account arena.

In 2008, Mark successfully passed the rigorous CWE (Certified Wine Educator) examination, and now strives to share the knowledge gained with On-Premise National Accounts through The Mark Wine Group portfolio of fine wines.