You don’t need a Supreme Court lawyer to tell you that the company is heading into a collision course because of the similar sounding names. Comité Interprofessionnel du Vin de Champagne (CIVC), the professional body of Champagne producers that has a multi-million dollar budget to protect Brand Champagne has been successful in making Sula rename its bubbly from Sula Champagne to Sula Brut. Champagne Indage even changed its name to Indage Vintners for reasons that are not difficult to guess.
The only known allowed brand today is ‘California Champagne’ which is allowed specifically for the sparkling wines produced in California before the EU geographic law became binding on the producers who were already marketing the bubbly in California as Champagne at that time.
Zampagne, if the brand label survives will focus on the premium segment of the bubbly market and is poised to sell at Rs 750 and Rs 1100 before taxes. The current avatars from Indage and Sula cost between Rs.550 and Rs.650 appx- both unabashedly using Thompson seedless grapes as a major percentage, though Sula is more forthcoming in the use of the eating grape variety. Both use the traditional Champagne method of second fermentation in the bottle (everyone in Maharashtra does, in fact). Marquise de Pompadour from Indage has become an adult, pleasing the palate of sparkler lovers in India and abroad for over 21 years.
As a part of its strategy of brand extension, VdV has also launched two new varietals under the Zampa label in the Mumbai market recently. While the wine producer already has Shiraz, Chenin Blanc and a Rosé in its portfolio, it has recently added the staple Cabernet Shiraz blend and the ubiquitous Sauvignon Blanc to its stable. The company plans to launch these wines across India in phases.
Zampa already has its presence in Mumbai, Delhi, Rajasthan, Bangalore, Pune, Haryana, Kolkata and Hyderabad. It plans to introduce the increasingly popular varietal Viognier by December 2009.
The company is headed by Deepak Roy, the liquor industry stalwart and once the blue-eyed boy of UB’s owner Vijay Mallya, who started the company with Neeraj Deora and was joined this January by another race-horse from the UB stable, Ravi Jain, an alumnus of IIT Delhi, who was biding his time till then to complete the no-compete clause with a UB company. Between the two, they have earned a strong reputation of creating liquor brands which is financially an extremely difficult task in today’s market..
It will be curious to see how far they can take forward Zampa and Zampagne as wine brands. UB has already introduced Zinzi label last year for their entry level wines before they brought out the four Seasons label, earlier this year.
Cav. Subhash Arora |