We See Huge Opportunity for Growth in India: Francesco Zonin

FRANCESCO ZONIN, Vice President, Casa Vinicola Zonin Spa, one of the world’s largest wine manufacturing company spoke exclusively to BW Hotelier about the wine business and India. Zonin is an important Italian wine producer which has nine estates around Italy and has been producing wine for almost two centuries.

Francesco Zonin is the seventh generation in the business, and coordinates sales and marketing activities globally for the company from their headquarters in Gambellara in Italy.

Zonin sells 14 different labels from their portfolio in India including: Zonin Prosecco, Zonin Amarone Della Valpolicella DOC and Castello di Bossi Chianti Classico DOCG,Castello D’Albola Oso Toscano IGT Wine and Zonin Masseria Altemura Sasseo Primitivo Salento IGT.

I began by asking Zonin about his company’s involvement in India and what they thought about the wine drinking culture developing here.

“We have been in India for 20 years. First time I arrived was in 1996. The expectations from this market are still high. I think India is moving in the right direction. Maybe we can discuss the speed at which it is moving forward, but it is moving forward”, he began by telling me.

He was happy to see more people interested in wine in the Indian market and felt that wine was slowly becoming a part of the dining culture here, something Indians were willing to get to know better.

“In 1996, I visited vineyards in India and I feel that this part of the business is growing really fast. I am amazed by it and think it’s the best thing that can happen to the wine trade here. This This is the fastest way that India is going to open up to wine culture, not through imported wine, but through very good domestic wine,” he said adding that 20 years ago he would not have said so, but India has started to make good wine now.

As far as imported wine is concerned, volumes are growing, and accounts for 10 percent of wine production, he said. “In India, the size of the market now is around 300,000 cases. To give you an idea, the volume of one label in one of the major restaurant chains in the US is 150,000 cases,” Zonin added by way of illustrating how small India’s wine volumes are.

“From our side we see this as an opportunity and one which will really grow. This is why we have been around in India for 20 years. We cannot influence the speed at which wine consumption will increase,” he added quickly.

“I think travelling is also a very big part of wine evolution in India. The more people travel to Italy or Europe, the more of the wine culture people will bring back. Knowledge of Italian wines across the world always depended on tourists or immigrants from Italy,” he said adding that it was also a matter of slowly changing the way Indians perceived wine. “We (as in Zonin the company) need to bring in more cultural elements. We need to come to India more often and do more wine tastings, do more events and expose more people to the produce,” he concluded.