| Wine-makers of La Mancha, made famous by immortal Spanish character Don Quixote and his crony Sancho Panza, are bracing to meet a new challenge: to enter the Indian market , writes Mahendra Ved for IANS from Ciudad Real , Spain .
The News item reported on the website www.indianmuslims.com of San Diego , California adds, " Many of the world's major wine makers see in India a large prospective market and want a share of it. Spain is relatively a late entrant, and wants to make up with an aggressive sales pitch, promising "much more value for money than some of the more famous French and Italian counterparts."
It is the region "where pleasures are born." And that lends the theme to a special cultural show put up for the delegates to the fair at Almagro, the medieval village that falls on what is called " Don Quixote Route ."
The number would still be small, considering that Spanish wine and Indian market have mutually figured quite low so far. In fact, Spain exported only 3,000* cases during 2006, which is nowhere near what France, Australia, the US and even a newcomer like Chile exported, as per the report of IWSR, a Scottish firm that keeps a tab on wine trade worldwide.
'Pricing its wines reasonably is essential for Spain to improve its presence in India ', says Subhash Arora of the Delhi Wine Club. The government on its part would need to slash the duties. Since Indian-made wine is available for Rs 400, an average Indian consumer is ready to spend between Rs 550 and Rs 750 for a foreign brand, but not much more.
It is an overcrowded market now. But everyone is pitching for the future in wooing the middle class with dispensable incomes, with the Indian economy recording a nine percent-plus growth," Arora says.
For full report visit: http://www.indianmuslims.info
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