Grover Zampa Vineyards’ Nashik property will be ready to welcome visitors next year, said Chief Operating Officer (COO) Sumit Jaiswal. Alongside this, the company will expand the production capacity of its Nashik winery from 500,000 litres to 1.25 million litres in the next 18 months.
“We will start renovating our Nashik winery, where we have a bigger facility. It will start getting spruced up and should welcome people in mid-January. Our Nashik location overlooks the hills on one side and the Mukane Dam on the other. In two to three years, once the project is complete, we’ll take a call on building a resort. The winery was built with the eventuality to encourage wine tourism. Once that is established and is getting good footfall, we would look at setting up accommodation,” he explained.
The wine player, whose market share in India is 12-15 per cent on average, owns two wineries across Karnataka and Maharashtra in Nandi Hills and Nashik respectively.
In 2019, Grover Zampa acquired Diageo’s wholly-owned subsidiary Four Seasons Wines and took operating control of Charosa Vineyards, an asset of Hindustan Construction Company.
Domestically, while it is present in most markets across the country, including some CSD stores, the company’s biggest market is Karnataka, followed by Maharashtra; other big markets include Haryana, Odisha, Kerala, and Telangana. Grover Zampa also exports 15-18 per cent of its wines produced to over 18 countries. However, this number was higher before the pandemic, in 24 countries.
“During the pandemic, over two years went by without much footfall. We got traffic again somewhere around the beginning of 2022, and they were unlike pre-Covid levels immediately. But from then onwards, it’s been going only upwards. In the South, we’ve traditionally been strong because the company started in Nandi Hills,” the COO said.
“In the Bangalore winery, we have 180 acres of land under a long-term lease. The rest is under contract. In Nasik, we have a 38-acre property of our own. Along with that, we have investments in Charosa, a 300-acre parcel. Four Seasons would be another under-plantation under 80 acres.”
Jaiswal also said the company is launching two to three high-end wines early next year. Alongside, the production capacity of the Bengaluru winery, currently around 1.5 million litres, may be expanded in two years.
For Grover Zampa, wine tourism contributed to 4 per cent of the overall revenue. This fiscal, the company will see a 20-25 per cent year-on-year growth in revenue since it will restart several markets.