Now, a wine fair

The Verona trade authority is bringing three wine expos to India.

The wine festival in Bordeaux may be what wine connoisseurs rave about. But it is Vinitaly, the Italian exhibition of wine and spirits, held in Verona every year, that is the world's largest. Now, Vinitaly has come to India.

Veronafiere (the Verona trade fair authority that holds the exhibition) has launched an Indian leg of "Vinitaly", bringing under its umbrella 50 Italian wine brands to the country for a trade show. These include the top 15 labels: Gaja, Masi, Tasca D' Almerita et al that serious wine-drinkers will recognise.

What's more, "Indian Vinitaly" is to be an annual feature now, says Giovanni Mantovani, director general, Veronafiere, with a presence in both Mumbai and Delhi besides possibly "a third city since, as we all know, India is a continent". The wine-makers are here as part of the ongoing India Food and Wine Show (IFOW) in Delhi.

Vinitaly's international tours have hitherto been confined to exhibitions in the US, Japan, China and Russia. The fact that they are now in India highlights the growing importance of our wine market. Italy exports just 4 per cent of its wine to Asia but the Asian market is growing rapidly at about 30 per cent annually; India, at a phenomenal 44 per cent.

"China and Japan are not growing as rapidly as India and South Korea," Mantovani says. The other "interesting" market is Russia "" contrary to its vodka image "" but being very much part of the European wine-drinking world, it is different from newer markets like India.

With sales stagnating in traditional wine-drinking countries, wine-makers, whether it is from France, Italy and Spain or new world California, Australia, Chile and South Africa are looking to tap markets like India.

Where Mantovani hopes Italian wine will score is that it offers "something for everyone, for all pockets. Good wine, but at moderate prices."

French wine is a good option only if you go for the top labels, he says. On the other hand, wineries in Italy, traditionally small and medium, unlike the huge ones of Australia and California, are learning to "co-operate" to market their products jointly, which makes the wine economically more viable for them, and enables them to price the final product more competitively.

Italy is one of the largest producers of wine, producing 50-55 million hectoliters annually, the same as France. Almost a third of the wine is exported. This year, Italian wine became the largest importer into the US market, something Mantovani attributes to "covering the market better" rather than focusing only on high-end.