Alpine Wineries plans to expand footprint

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Alpine Wineries Private Ltd, a unit of Rs 600 crore SPR Group of Bangalore, which has interests in liquor manufacturing and retail, real estate, hospitality and granite businesses, has entered the wine market with three wine labels.

“We have registered three labels with the excise department of Karnataka and launched in the state this year. Over a period of next three years, we will expand our business across 18 states in the country,” T Raghavendra Gowda, managing director of Alpine Wineries Private Ltd, said. The company plans to sell 1,000 bottles a day across three labels — Vindiva Reserve, Vindiva Classic and ORO - through shopping malls like Spar, Total, Spencer, Metro and MSIL outlets as well as its own wine taverns across the state. Besides all these, it is also planning to sell at leading restaurants and star hotels. To begin with the company plans to set up 25 wine taverns in Bangalore city and later retail through its own wine boutiques, he said. Alpine grows its own grapes (both red and white) on a 250-acre plot in Talakadu.

It has set up a new winery with an installed capacity of 800,000 litres per annum at an investment of Rs 125 crore at Talakadu in Mysore district. The capacity is expandable up to 4.5 million litres in the second phase. The company has finalised six varieties of white and six varieties of red wine. “We have a family property of 1,250 acres, which was lying idle for many years. We have now converted 250 acres for grape cultivation. Going forward we will add another 250 acres in the next two years once we launch our labels in other states,” Gowda told Business Standard. During the next three years, the company plans to launch its labels in Delhi, Maharashtra, Puduchery, Haryana, and Andhra Pradesh among other states. The company also plans to export its labels to France, UK, West Asia, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia.

“We have some enquiries from France and the UK through our French consultant. We have also been invited by France to showcase our wines at an international festival. We are looking for distributors in these countries and export our wines gradually,” Gowda added.