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 The new post is for a period of 3 years and comes into effect today. Yatin who says he was reluctant to get into the fray because he feels it is really a thankless job and takes the focus away from his own production , decided to accept member’s desire to have a unanimous choice-and as he was that choice. There are four Vice Presidents-one from each production zone of Nashik, Sangli, Pune and Karnataka. The post for the Nashik area has been left unfilled at the moment, says Yatin. Here is the list of the new office-bearers:
President -Yatin Patil
Vice President- D N (Darby) Raju (Karnataka)
Vice President -Dr. Jaideep Patil (Sangli)
Vice President- Hanumantrao Tambe (Pune)
Vice-President-Vacant (Nashik)
Treasurer- Abhijeet Shikhre
Secretary-Rajesh Borse
Co-ordinator- Manoj Jagtap
One of the issues on the agenda of the current Board is to try to persuade the Maharashtra government to get wine included in the list of items for GST. Agreeing with my suggestion that the issue has a lot to do with the States not willing to include alcoholic products, he however feels that they must keep the pressure up as they had done earlier too and had met Mr. Sushil Modi during the days of the IGPB.
Whether the Association get support of bigger players in its efforts to support the smaller wineries is a moot point, especially with their ambitious vision of creating ‘Wines of India’ brand which was one of the main charters of the now defunct Indian Grape Processing Board (IGPB). ‘Some of us like Ashwin Rodrigues of Good Drop Cellars, Shailendra Pai (of Vallonne) and Vintage Wines have been working in unison towards this objective. We have now formed a Committee in which Neeraj Aggarwal, Vice President of Sula is also a member and we are hopeful to take the concept forward,’ he says about a subject very important to the Indian wine industry. They plan to pick up the best wines from different producer members and showcase them at various platforms.
One issue that the Association would have full support of everyone is the arbitrary manner in which the excise department is trying to create problems and implement the duty of 100% for blending. The 10-year excise policy has waived the excise duty on wines made in the winery within Maharashtra but blending has been a subject of contention and Yatin says that they are trying to impose the duty at 100% for blending the wines from the estate grown grapes.
Imposing of excise duty on blending (a term not clear to the excise department, it seems) is an issue that needs to be fought on the common platform of this Association. As Yatin says, excise department had issued a notification imposing a 100% duty on bulk transfer of wines. This resulted in large wineries like Sula stopping to buy bulk wines from smaller wineries, a practice that has helped the survival of smaller wineries and making expansion of bigger wineries faster. Apparently, AIWPA had protested making the department agree to withdraw the notice of the payment of 100% excise on wine blended from purchasing bulk wine from other wineries within the State. He says the excise superintendents have been now going from winery to winery, collecting the data of which grapes are going into which wines and which market, ostensibly to bring the blending of these varietals in the 100% excise duty net. This must rightly be opposed tooth and nail and all wineries would co-operate in opposing the arbitrary treatment.
The Association has about 100 members currently out of which about 50 are active producers, including around 40 small producers. They need help in improving quality and in marketing without which many are bound to disappear. It would be interesting to see how Yatin and his team goes about tackling the issue. He has a very amiable personality and as a hard working producer with eyes on quality and market and is a good choice to take the Association forward.
One of the important issues they should work together is to have Maharashtra and Karnataka both repeal their policy of protecting their self interest by penalising the import of wine from each other. Apart from seemingly ‘ a potentially divisive national policy’, it has not achieved much with producers in both States having found the solutions to skirt around it, with only these smaller producers left twiddling their thumbs.
They also need to stay away from demanding financial aid at all times. Begging the government for alms on any and all occasions might not be the solution- none of the bigger companies used this as a crutch and have been able to grow despite the financial constraints. This was due to their business acumen, which is not an unusual requirement of the wine business which at the end of the day is also a business.
On the first day of his assignment, delWine wishes him and his team a successful tenure and hope they can make AIWPA a stronger Association and not a body for mere aggrandisement. We also hope that the bigger players will actively support the Association and endeavour to make it a strong body.
Subhash Arora |