Oct 21: After getting out of the partnership with Prestige Wine and Spirit that started in 2001 as a joint venture between the Spanish giant and Gautam Thapar a couple of years ago, Familia Torres has now decided to withdraw from equity participation in India and has appointed Sula Selections as its exclusive importer and distributor in India for its complete range of products with effect from January 2020, thus withdrawing completely from Prestige, writes Subhash Arora
Confirming the import agreement, Rajeev Samant, Founder CEO of Sula group said in a long chat with delWine from London that the actual import would start in January 2020 and it will be an important part of their portfolio. Without disclosing or speculating on any numbers, he only said it would become an integral and important part of Sula Selection’s imports.
‘We will start the imports from January, 2020 and initially will be conservative in our approach as the excise year would be coming to an end. But we shall go full steam ahead from next financial year-of course, within the realm of Indian market which has been rather poor during the current year for everybody in India but one hopes the worst would be behind us by then,’ he said.
Why the sudden interest in Torres? ‘I had met Miguel Torres at the Porto Conference on Climate Control last year and was very impressed with him and his passion to do everything possible to save the planet. I even visited his winery and found it to be the most sustainable winery on the whole planet. It was a natural alignment for both of us as we also have sustainable wineries and our core values are similar. Besides, I am aware that Torres is a Brand truly admired around the world.'
No one can deny that a lot of hard work has been put in by the Torres-Thapar Prestige Wines joint venture of 2001-2018 to promote the Torres label and make it a household name amongst wine drinkers. During the early days, no one had heard of Torres in our nascent market and later, for many years, people knew of Torres but not its origin. Many still don’t know it has a winery in different regions in Spain and also in Chile. In fact, those conversant about wine history know that Torres was the one who introduced modern techniques in Chile in the 1970s that helped develop the industry. Prestige had carried the torch for Torres for several years. Torres wines have been known to be reasonably priced quality wines. In fact, the Spanish producers interested in the Indian market are pre-warned that they have to compete not only with countries like Italy, France Chile and Australia but also Torres.
Miguel Torres has been very bullish about India, in all the years I have met him several times in the last 14 years. In fact, despite their joint venture in China, he had higher hopes in India and has been quite happy about the standing of Torres wines in India. When I met him at the MUST Fermenting Ideas Wine Conference in Cascais Portugal in June this year, he did not seem to be happy with the market-especially after passing the baton to his son, Miguel Torres Junior. Possibly the decision to walk out of the partnership with Thapar was because of the new global strategy of Familia Torres.
Sula will undoubtedly have to work hard to sell higher numbers but with a national distribution, it ought to be a remunerative addition, adding both to the prestige and the top line, helping it climb higher in delWine’s Top Ten position.
For the previous related Article, please visit:
Prestige Wines Restructures to make it Asset-Light
Subhash Arora
If you Like this article please click on the Like button