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Indian Wine On The Up, Says Marks & Spencer

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Indian Wine On The Up, Says Marks & Spencer

Marks & Spencer wine buyer Emma Dawson says that UK consumers are drinking more and more Indian wine and that the supermarket’s range of Indian wines produced by Sula Vineyards are doing really well.

 

Dawson was speaking at the roundtable discussion on Indian wine at the inaugural Indian Wine Fair at the weekend where she sat on the panel alongside Hallgarten wine buyer Steve Daniel, who began importing Sula’s wines to the UK in 2005.

 

“We’ve got a really good track record of sales performance,” said Dawson. “We have a range of wines from what we call the ‘Other World’ - countries like Greece, Turkey, Lebanon, Israel - and that gave us some confidence because they were doing very well. So when I took the first volume for Indian wine, I based it on what those countries were doing, and I actually had to go back and buy three times that amount.

 

“Of this range of ‘other countries’, Indian wines now represent 25 per cent of sales of that range. And that’s a complete surprise to us. It shows for me that it wasn’t a novelty thing, because if it was a novelty thing you’d find that the first six months were great and then everything would just trail off. But actually it’s very stable in terms of sales.”

 

M&S sells three Indian wines all made by Sula; a Sauvignon Blanc, a Tempranillo/Syrah and Zinfandel rosé.

 

Steve Daniel told the panel that Indian wine sales had increased “by about 20%” year-on-year since the company began importing from Sula Vineyards 10 years ago.

 

“We started with Sula back in 2005 as an importer. I think we were one of their first export markets. The reason I looked to Indian wine… there was a logical conclusion to me, that Indian food was the most popular cuisine in our market, the most popular take-home, whether it’s from a supermarket shelf or a take-away. We are more and more interested in wine, we want to get the right wine and the right food, so for me it was a no-brainer.

 

Read the full article from Drinks Business HERE.