‘We achieved sales volume of 195,000 cases despite many negative factors,’ says Rajeev. ‘We were helped in pushing volumes by increase in the sale of low-end wines like Samara, Dia,’ adding softly, ‘and Port wines’ knowing our aversion to the Goanese invented concoction classified as Port, a nomenclature which will sooner or later evaporate when Porto in Portugal wakes up one day and decides to complain to the European Union.
EU laws stipulate that Port wine can be produced only in a specified region in and around Porto, the region that does not include the previous Portuguese colony or the country with which it was at loggerheads years after Goa was annexed and integrated back with India.
With Indage Vintners not releasing their figures and with the present nadir in the credibility of their released information, this puts Sula pretty much as the top producer of wine in India as of now. Grover Winery, one of the top 3 for the last several years, suffered a catastrophic fall in volumes last year due to some quality issues because of which they sold less than 50,000 cases-with no release of products between July and December last year.
The figures disclosed by Rajeev include foreign variants like Maison Pierre and other imported wines in the portfolio, the total of which might be around 10,000 cases. Sula had sold 169,000 cases last year.
Although, he feels satisfied with the positive growth, ‘it is far below the target of 250,000 cases we had budgeted for the year,’ he adds. Rajeev was reluctant to comment on the current year’s targets at this point.
Sula was the first premium established player to sense the slowdown when he had disclosed to delWine in September that their sales that month had been a disaster and it was practically a wash-out month. The downturn and the negative sentiments continued till the beginning of 2009 when sales started picking up and his sales strategy fell in place.
Sula’s journey to the top comes exactly a decade after being in production. It completes 10 years of winemaking this year.
Subhash Arora |