Bombay bubbly aims to snare champagne market

Press, 20 December 1986, Page 17

Bombay bubbly aims to snare champagne market

By

ROBERT MAHONEY

of Reuter (through NZPA) Bombay

Next time you order a curry at your favourite Indian restaurant, you could wash it down with a bottle of Bombay bubbly. To the surprise of the wine world India is making “champagne.” The first bottles of champagne-type wine left the bustling Arabian Sea port of Bombay earlier this year for Britain and more are on the way. Soon wine buffs in parts of Western Europe and Canada, Japan, and SouthEast Asia will also be able to sample the wine which the manufacturer, Shamrao Chougule, thinks is every bit as good as the stuff from France.

The French, of course, do not agree even though the French champagne group, Piper Heidsieck, helped millionaire Mr Chougule to set up his winery at Narayangaon. The wine, known by the very un-Indian name of “Marquise de Pompadour, Royal Mousseux,” will not be sold in France to compete with the group’s own home-grown product. Mr Chougule’s company, Champagne India, Ltd, says it plans to go all out after the British, the biggest champagne drinkers after the French. “We won a bronze medal at our first wine competition in London in July,” said the company’s managing director, Mr A. V. Deshmukh. “The reac-

tion of the trade has been very good,” he said. Royal Mousseux, described as “sec” will soon be joined by an even drier brut version, more suited to the refined British palate, Mr Deshmukh said.

The slightly sweeter variety is destined for Asia and the Canadian provinces of Quebec and Ontario.

British marketing men have advised the company to sell the brut under the equally unIndian name of the Persian poet Omar Khayyam. The company’s Japanese advertisers have gone even further and turned the worldly Marquise de Pompadour label into the more serene “Gautamah Buddah.”

Whatever the name, a wine with a Product of India label is going to draw some sceptical looks in Western supermarkets. In the 12 European Community countries it cannot even be called champagne because it does not come from 28,000 ha of north-east France designated as such under the strict “appellation controlee” system of origin.

Mr Deshmukh concedes that he has a big marketing job on his hands. He and his colleagues are flying around the world to meet wine merchants and promote the wine at blind tastings such as one in London.

He has convinced Indian embassies to offer

it at receptions and is negotiating to have ■it served aboard Air India flights. “There is a lot of scepticism about Indian wine,” Mr Deshmukh said.

Justly so, according to many connoisseurs and everyday tipplers. Winemaking in India goes back more than 2000 years but the art is not widely understood. Alexis Lichine in his Encyclopaedia of Wines and Spirits calls it "more of a hobby than a serious business.”

Western travellers who have woken up with the mother and father of all hangovers after a half bottle of Maharashtra red have been less kind.

That is why seven years ago, Mr Chougule went

straight to the masters when he decided to try to grow his favourite drink on native soil.

Piper Heidsieck’s Champagne Technologic subsidiary provided every thing: Chardonnay vines, huge steel vats, riddling and bottling machines, bottles, corks, and even their master blender, Raphael Brisbois. He has spent the last three years in Narayangaon supervising the growing of grapes and experimenting with the vital blending process which gives each champagne its distinctive taste.

The wine is made exactly as in France. The only concessions to India are air conditioners in the cellar and grapes grown

two metres off the ground to avoid disease. The six-million-dollar plant aims to produce 500,000 bottles next year and 750,000 in 1988. Nowhere near the 200 million produced in Champagne but a good beginning, according to Mr Deshmukh. The wine cannot be sold in India for rupees because all the equipment to make it was imported and has to be paid for in foreign exchange. Although labour in India is cheaper than in Europe the wine works out more expensive than many Californian, Australian, German and Spanish sparkling wines.

It will retail in London at £7.50 a bottle, only £3

cheaper than French champagne. “We are going for quality, not just price,” said Mr Deshmukh. So how does it taste? Well, that depends on where you come from. The comments book from a London tasting showed that British and Spanish merchants found it “excellent,” a “remarkable achievement,” with “a good fruit, refreshing sparkle and agreeably dry.”

French merchants found it “interesting considering its origin” or “a reasonable if unexciting sparkling wine.” French champagne growers, with a show of Gallic hauteur, refused even to taste it.