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 One
in four people in Britain eats a curry at least once
a week. Half a million eat curried food every day! Curry
is a UK phenomenon enjoyed at every level. Couple this
with the British’s growing love of wine and you
can understand why the owner, Ashraf Sharif's business
idea has been a hit in Indian cuisine restaurants in
London, Birmingham and other big cities in UK.
I noticed Balti Wines when I read a news report that
Balti was planning to sponsor the Indo British cricket
matches played last two months in UK. What a brilliant
idea, I thought! With the phenomenal Indian viewer ship
it would be quite an economical way of advertising on
TV and getting around the advertising laws in India
banning such ads! Why did it not occur to Indage, Sula
and other progressive Indian producers?
On checking their website, reading about them and through
emails, I found out that the company has walked the
extra mile to match their wines with the spicy Indian
foods. The Range of five blended wines- 3 whites &
2 reds, is the product of extensive tasting in conjunction
with representatives from the Food Technology Department
at Manchester University and working with restaurant
owners and customers.
"It's no gimmick," claims Sharif, 53, headquartered
in Manchester. ‘It took four years of extensive
research in collaboration with Manchester University's
food science department, and samples from around the
globe, before we all were happy with the grape selections,
“ he adds.
"At first, Indian wines seemed the obvious answer,
but we found people didn't like them because they're
not used to them," he says, explaining that the
wines they eventually chose come from Argentina. The
New World, he explains, tends to make wines that have
an upfront fruity style that complements the spice in
the food.
A marketing idea that helped him pair his portfolio
of wines with different cuisines was the classification
of wines with different chilli ratings from 1-3. Thus
a wine with a rating of 3 would be able to handle the
extremely hot chilli dish while the one chilli wine
would be recommended for a softer and milder preparation.
For instance, the dry white wine with Sauvignon- Chardonnay
blend has been given a Chilli 1 rating and is designated
for mild cuisines whereas the Ugni Blanc- Chardonnay
is fuller bodied wine that has got 3 Chilli ratings
designated to go with the hottest of foods.
Bonarda- Malbec blend is the red wine for mild foods
whereas the Syrah Merlot has a rating of 2 and is designated
for medium to spicy food.
In the very early stages we approached Jeffery Archer
from the Food & Technology Department at Manchester
Metropolitan University. Comments Jeffrey, ‘ The
approach we took was to do taste panels, and try a wide
range of wines against a wide range of curries to find
out what sort of wine would suit the different kinds
of curry. Intuitively we thought that a rather large,
strong, red wine would go well with hot foods, but we
discovered that you really needed some sweetness to
cut through the flavours, and that's what has been blended
in.’
Apart from the restaurants Balti Wine has already secured
a lucrative contract to supply wine to P&O cruises,
and the company has started producing mini-bottles for
airlines. "Our biggest company is Compass Trading
and they supply 17 airports and nine docks around the
country."
The wines are reasonably priced at around £5
in UK, the price point which most wine drinkers look
at for daily drinking. Sharif is working at selling
them to the supermarkets for retail at less than £6.
For the lovers of fiery- hot curry there is a choice
of wines with a three-chilli rating. An injection of
fresh capital from investors has enabled the company
to open an office in the US, with a view to cracking
the lucrative North American market. "Although
Indian food is behind the UK in terms of popularity,
it is growing astronomically," says Sharif. In
fact Balti Wine is already stocked and sold in 13 US
states.
With hundreds of thousands of people looking for a
wine with proper food-wine match, can India be far behind
for Bucketfuls of Balti Wines?
Subhash Arora
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