F & B News

Vintage Wines expands market in India, abroad

Sayoni Bhaduri - Mumbai

Vintage Wines, launched in April 2006, is planning to expand its product - Reveilo - not only in India but also abroad. Yatin Patil, its co-director, informed that after having a presence in Maharashtra and Karnataka, it intends to expand into Delhi and West Bengal in another two to three months.

It is also looking at creating a market in Rajasthan and Goa in the future. Patil says, "The plan to expand to these markets has been made keeping in mind that 50 per cent consumption of wine is attributed to Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore and Goa." There are also plans of moving into Tamil Nadu, Kerala, and Andhra Pradesh. However, it intends to keep its market focused on the metropolitan cities with no plans to move into tier-II cities.

Internationally, it has already finalised deals with an importer in the United States. With an initial 100 cases with a price point between US$ 10 and US$ 12 for regular wine and between US$ 30 and US$ 40 for reserve wine, it is hoping for a trickle-down effect. "We are promoting the product as an Indian premium wine and are initially targeting the Indian restaurants abroad. They seem to have a huge demand for Indian wines," said Kiran Patil, co-director of Vintage Wines. It is also in talks with importers in UK, Italy and Japan.

The group is also planning to introduce new varieties of wine by 2010. These include Sangiovese, Nero d'avola and Grillo which will be produced from the Italian variety of grapes. The company recently won awards for four of its wines in the Indian Wine Challenge. It has its vineyard in Nasik where it also does the production and bottling.