x-change of spirits

Are you very health conscious? Trying hard to have a healthy regime? But can't beat the drinking habit. Maybe you have an option now. So stop whining and switch to wine! This is a recent trend worth noticing that Indian spirit lovers are switching to wine in social circuits.

Wine is a complete lifestyle drink very much related to health which can be an extension of the consumer’s personality. Though most of the Indian consumers are unable to relate themselves to wine but off late they have been able to associate with it. Increasing awareness of wine as a separate drink other than spirits has made it more socially acceptable. Increasing health consciousness and the increasing spend on corporate and personal entertainment has given a boost to this sector. The increasing awareness in Govt. authorities to encourage wine drinking compared to spirits has certainly brought cheers to the companies in the sector.

The per capita consumption in India is only 0.07 liter/person/year. The biggest consumption up to 80% is however confined to major cities like Mumbai (39%), Delhi (23%), Bangalore (9%) and the foreign tourist dominated state of Goa (9%), where as Rest of India has only 20% consumption.

At the moment India produces only 8.35 million bottles per year. There is a huge potential in Indian market itself. There are 7 European companies in wine sector in India. India imports around 3 million liters of spirit and 7500 cases of wine from Europe. French wines are still the largest imported, but wines from Australia and California are making strong inroads. The wine market is growing at 25-30 per cent a year, nearly three times as fast as beer, whisky or rum, which together makes up 45 per cent of the total. Exports currently make up about 10-15 per cent of total output

A snapshot of Indian wine

Few problems faced by Indian wine industry:

One of the other reasons why wine drinking has not caught on is that quality wines are priced relatively high. Since the volumes are low, production costs are high, as are taxes. Thus the real challenge for winemakers in India is to develop a domestic market, and that is where the problem arises. “Traditionally wine lovers around the world have some kind of a mental block against Indian wines. They are just not comfortable with the Made in India tag.

The wine industry is both competitive and challenging. It exhibits the characteristics of the consumer packaged goods (CPG) industry –aggressive brand building supported by large advertising and event budgets, combined with high manufacturing costs. But a key differentiation in the wine industry is the relatively higher packaging costs– glass bottles, labels, foils etc. So a key challenge for industry is maintaining lower costs was to control the cost of expensive packaging inputs. Another challenge for the company was to manage the distribution of the finished goods.

So go ahead and have a

Verre de vin

Cheers!!