India's First Wine, Food and Hospitality Website, INDIAN WINE ACADEMY, Specialists in Food & Wine Programmes. Food Importers in Ten Cities Across India. Publishers of delWine, India’s First Wine.
 
 
Skip Navigation Links
Home
About Us
Indian Market
Wine & Health
Wine Events
Hotels
Retail News
Blog
Contact Us
Skip Navigation Links
Wine Tourism
Book Review
Launch
Winery
TechTalk
Photo Gallery
Readers' Comments
Editorial
Media
Video Wall
Media Partners
Ask Wineguyindia
Wine & Food
Wine Guru
Perspectives
Gerry Dawes
Harvest Reports
Mumbai Reports
Advertise With Us
Classifieds
US Report on Indian Market Released
Top Ten Importers List 2015-16
On Facebook
 
On Twitter
Delhi Wine Club
 

Posted: Tuesday, June 30 2009. 11:13

Zampa on Collision Course with Champagne

Mumbai based domestic wine producer, Vallée de Vin, which started operations in India with the launch of Zampa brand of wines last year plans to launch two sparkling wines, sparkling brut and a rosé bubbly next month under the brand Zampagne, making it a prime target of lawsuit by Champagne, feels Subhash Arora.

You don’t need a Supreme Court lawyer to tell you that the company is heading into a collision course because of the similar sounding names. Comité Interprofessionnel du Vin de Champagne (CIVC), the professional body of Champagne producers that has a multi-million dollar budget to protect Brand Champagne has been successful in making Sula rename its bubbly from Sula Champagne to Sula Brut. Champagne Indage even changed its name to Indage Vintners for reasons that are not difficult to guess.

The only known allowed brand today is ‘California Champagne’ which is allowed specifically for the sparkling wines produced in California before the EU geographic law became binding on the producers who were already marketing the bubbly in California as Champagne at that time.

Zampagne, if the brand label survives will focus on the premium segment of the bubbly market and is poised to sell at Rs 750 and Rs 1100 before taxes. The current avatars from Indage and Sula cost between Rs.550 and Rs.650 appx- both unabashedly using Thompson seedless  grapes as a major percentage, though Sula is more forthcoming in the use of the eating grape variety. Both use the traditional Champagne method of second fermentation in the bottle (everyone in Maharashtra does, in fact). Marquise de Pompadour from Indage has become an adult, pleasing the palate of sparkler lovers in India and abroad for over 21 years.

As a part of its strategy of brand extension, VdV has also launched two new varietals under the Zampa label in the Mumbai market recently. While the wine producer already has Shiraz, Chenin Blanc and a Rosé in its portfolio, it has recently added the staple Cabernet Shiraz blend and the ubiquitous Sauvignon Blanc to its stable. The company plans to launch these wines across India in phases.

Zampa already has its presence in Mumbai, Delhi, Rajasthan, Bangalore, Pune, Haryana, Kolkata and Hyderabad. It plans to introduce the increasingly popular varietal Viognier by December 2009.

The company is headed by Deepak Roy, the liquor industry stalwart and once the  blue-eyed boy of UB’s owner Vijay Mallya, who started the company with Neeraj Deora and  was joined this January by another race-horse from the UB stable, Ravi Jain, an alumnus of  IIT Delhi, who was biding his time till then  to complete the no-compete clause with a UB company. Between the two, they have earned a strong reputation of creating liquor brands which is financially an extremely difficult task in today’s market..

It will be curious to see how far they can take forward Zampa and Zampagne as wine brands. UB has already introduced Zinzi label last year for their entry level wines before they brought out the four Seasons label, earlier this year. 

Cav. Subhash Arora

       

Want to Comment ?
Name  
Email   
Please enter your comments in the space provided below. If there is a problem, please write directly to arora@delwine.com. Thank you.


Captcha
Generate a new image

Type letters from the image:


Please note that it may take some time to get your comment published...Editor

Wine In India, Indian Wine, International Wine, Asian Wine Academy, Beer, Champagne, World Wine Academy, World Wine, World Wines, Retail, Hotel

     
 

 
 
Copyright©indianwineacademy, 2003-2020 |All Rights Reserved
Developed & Designed by Sadilak SoftNet