Good Earth Winery, a new entrant in wine manufacturing, will launch its three new brands of premium wines on Friday, its top official said. Girish Mhatre, founder director, Good Earth Winery, told Financial Chronicle that the premium range of Cabernet and Shiraz reserve as a part of the Concerto Collection consists of Basso priced at Rs 1,450 and Brio at Rs 1,375.

The Sauvignon Blanc in the regular range of Raga Collection is Aarohi with a price tag of Rs 725. All come in the standard 750 ml bottles. “My Basso and Brio are positioned as one of the highest priced Indian wines simply because they are of international standard for the connoisseur of great wines,” he said.

The Pune-based company will initially target Mumbai, the biggest market for wines and Pune, where the wine culture was rapidly catching up. “We have produced 1,000 cases (12,000 bottles) which are one year old and have selected top retailers in Mumbai and Pune to sell our products,” Mhatre, an IIT Mumbai alumnus, said. The 60-year-old is gung-ho about his “made in India”, but acceptable in Italy, France and Germany wines. These European countries have been producing wines for hundreds of years. “My goal is to produce wine in the premium segment focusing more on the international market and not as a mass producer,” Mhatre said, nursing the ambition to become a cult wine producer.

“I have visited the European wineries several times and I plan to invest Rs 2.5 crore of my own money before I reach profitability in 2010,” Mhatre said. His ambition is to make it an international brand and get into international competition.

At present, he is not investing in vineyard but has tied up with the seven-year-old ND Wines, a consortium of farmers, and York Winery, owned by Gurunani family in Nashik. “I pay them for using their equipment and pay the workers per bottle of wine produced and I carefully produce lower yield grapes for my wines on their farms,” he said. “We irrigate our grape farms less so that we get desired reduced yield but high quality fruit for our type of wine,” he said.

His is backward integration business model. “Land is expensive in Nashik, where over 80 per cent of wine consumed in the country is made and it generally takes about five years to get the product to the market,” he said. So he has got into the market first to “build the brand, develop volumes” and then plans to own his own vineyard in Nashik.

There has been an overwhelming response to his three wine tasting events: two in Pune and one in Mumbai, held during the last two months. “For upmarket clients, price is not a hassle really as they are used to imported wines. I want to believe I have hit the right chord and I will make it,” Mhatre said.