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Sudha Menon

Sula wines are making a name for themselves abroad but it's selling in India that's the challenge.

Rajeev Samant, Managing Director, Sula Vineyards

HE is a Stanford-trained engineer who worked for Oracle in Silicon Valley before heading back home to Nasik and ending up manufacturing one of the country's best-known wines under the Sula Vineyards brand.

Rajeev Samant, Managing Director of Sula Vineyards, who has IT's whiz-kid Vinod Khosla among others on his list of buyers in the US, is all set to seduce gourmets and connoisseurs in France with wines from his vineyard.

Come September and the first consignment of wines from Sula will head towards France this month where it will compete for attention with other global wines in some of the finest restaurants in the country, says Samant. Wine lovers in New York will also get a taste of it around the same time..

Selling wine to the French? Cynics would say that needs a lot of gumption but no, says Samant. "If you know your wines well and the quality is impeccable, they will sell anywhere in the world". Besides, he says, he is already selling Sula wines in Italy, where the denizens love their wines with as much passion as the French do, and they love it. "The French love India as a country with lots of spirituality and culture and they absolutely adore the fact that now they make quality wines too." Sula wines are already exported to the US where they are now available in over 40 restaurants in the Bay Area and also through retail stores where, he says, a captive population of well-heeled Indians have made it their preferred wine brand.

Samant is simultaneously stepping up his plans for the domestic market as the demand for wine is growing exponentially, he says, backing this up by pointing out that while in 2002 the winery crushed 100 tonnes of grape, this season they will do 400 tonnes and still not have enough wine to cater to the demand. The company has now acquired 300 acres of land in the wine-growing belt of Dindori at Nasik not only to extend vineyard acreage but also set up a brand new winery to hike capacity from 1,70,000 litres to 6,50,000 litres. In December, the company will take up planting on 70 acres of the new vineyard, which will make it the single largest vineyard plantation in a month ever in India.

"Business has grown over 200 per cent in the last year and turnover this year will touch Rs 10 crore," Samant says, adding, however, that consumption levels in India are nowhere near global levels. Meanwhile, farmers in the State's grape-growing belt are probably taking the cue from him and are switching from growing table grape to wine grapes. Others are ensuring guaranteed income by entering into contract farming for those already in the business and perennially facing shortage of grapes.

But while the situation at this point seems as rosy as the rose wines that some of them manufacture, Samant says steadily declining import duties might at some point result in competition from abroad. Now, Sula is importing wines from Australia, South Africa and the US to cater to the demand for premium imported wines.

"Marketing wine to a market which has grown up drinking other spirits is a whole new ball game and branding your wine is even more difficult but we are getting there," says Samant.

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