Wine Business In India

MUMBAI: Roland Abella, the India head of Diageo, the worldâ??s largest spirits maker, had his job cut out for him when he took over in April 2009. The local arm of the European company was in the news for alleged mismanagement by some of its top executives, including his predecessor, Asif Adil.

The 42-year-old Lebanese national has since cleaned up the cobwebs at Diageo India, realigned its business portfolio with an eye on premiumisation and has brought in a new set of people to drive the companyâ??s growth in one of the fastest growing economies in the world.

Diageo bore the financial brunt of inventory mismanagement, inflated promotional expenses and other losses that took place before Abella joined. Abella, the first expatriate to be at the helm of the 14-year-old outfit, was reluctant to share details about the episode. â??â??The past is the past,â??â?? he says.

Diageo bore the financial brunt of inventory mismanagement, inflated promotional expenses and other losses that took place before Abella joined. Abella, the first expatriate to be at the helm of the 14-year-old outfit, was reluctant to share details about the episode. â??â??The past is the past,â??â?? he says. â??â??There were some disruptions in the company. The last one year we have worked towards reforming our business.â??â?? The company has refrained from speaking to the media during the past year.

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Premium Indian wine was considered an oxymoron before Kiran and Yatin Patil decided to actually make one, driven by the simple belief that quality justifies price. They were right on the money. After a first crush of grapes just five years ago, Reveilo has a presence on nearly all major five-star hotel wine lists, is a darling of the expat community that yearns for good Indian wine and dominates the premium segment of wine. It's even more interesting since neither Kiran nor Yatin Patil have a background in the wine business (both are MBAs) apart from the fact that Yatin’s family owned a table grape estate. Yatin's father, Suresh saw the opportunity in 2001 when the state released its Grape Processing Policy 2001, encouraging grape farmers to switch from table grapes to wine. From then on, a sizable chunk of the family’s 100 acres in the Niphad district of Nashik was dedicated to cultivating wine grapes.

Not content with a bulging bucket of firsts that also includes extended bottle ageing before release to the market and the use of synthetic cork, they introduced their first vintage of Italian grape varieties Nero D’Avola, Sangiovese and Grillo. In a wine market where the typical consumer is happy simply telling white from red, it’s an audacious move, but not out of the ordinary for a couple that sells the country’s most expensive wine at over Rs 1,300  bottle. "The approach is rooted in the conviction that Indians believe premium wine can be made locally and will buy it," Kiran says.

Here, as in Aman’s other Asian properties, she has rolled out wine programs. And the dining elite of the capital rely immensely on Kavita to choose their wines for them. The experience, she says, has been illuminating. "There’s a different sort of thrill working in a wine market that is still only developing," says Faiella. "One feels a part of its evolution. For me, it’s been fascinating to see how Indians approach wine. They like red wines with lots of flavor and are still coming to grips with the idea of pairing Indian food with wine. They prefer robust American reds to the delicate French ones. For me, interacting with them is a learning experience in itself,” she avers. Rather interestingly, Kavita believes that wine really needs to enter the Indian home if it is to truly become part of their culture, much like it did in Italy. It’s a telling fact, she says, that Hong Kong and China account for 67 percent of Asia’s wine consumption, and India just one percent. Clearly, there’s a lot of work to be done and Kavita’s been doing a lot of it.

But his most significant contribution apart from the wine itself is opening Nashik up as a wine destination. His winery was the first to have a tasting room in the region. It grows popular by the day with locals and out-of-towners and lots of young people driving in for a tour of the winery, a taste and dinner. Rajeev also created SulaFest, the country’s only annual wine and music festival held at an amphitheater near the winery. There’s no telling what other vinous ideas he plans to materialize. For Rajeev, after making a leap from 50,000 bottles in 2000 to three million in 2010, the market is only just warming up.

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Bulli No. 1 to Take Sabb...

Beer Baron of India and Chairman of the UB Group, Vijay Mallya says he is bullish about its wine business in India and though admitting they were late entrants, it was because they were studying the market potential earlier.

Having entered the market with the entry level Zinzi wines, followed by the flagship label Fours Seasons, he said, "We have been late entrants into the market and deliberately so," explaining that the group had been assessing the market potential for the wine business.

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