Diversification through processing of grape wine

While industry in India has provided considerable opportunities for value-addition, employment generation and contract farming in the agroprocessing sector, it has also offered possibilities for grape cultivation on a large scale as a measure of agri-diversification, and most importantly, it has shown the way to a traditional grape grower to became an industrialist. The wine processing units of average capacity of about 1 lakh litres are coming up after the release of ‘Maharashtra Grape Processing Industrial Policy 2001. Of the 35 grape wineries established, 16 are large units (above 1 lakh litres) with total processing capacity of 33.5 lakh litres and project cost of Rs 40.98 crores (excluding 2 old units of Baramati and Junnar) and 19 are small units with 11.02 lakh litres capacity and project cost of Rs 19.19 crores. The average annual wine producing capacity of the units surveyed has been found as 50,667 litres (small size) and 2,86,875 litres (big size) with average investment of Rs 97 lakh and Rs 337 lakh per unit, respectively. About half of the wine production is undertaken by using non-wine varieties of grapes (Bangalore purple, Thompson, etc.). The acreage under different wine varieties has been found to include 55.63 per cent of the total area under white wine varieties, followed by 32.96 per cent under red wine and the remaining 11.41 per cent under rosae still wine variety for small units. The sample wineries have used 1232 tonnes (small) and 2284 tonnes (large) of grapes for wine making during 2005 of which about 51 per cent was own produce. There is a scope to increase the area under grape wine varieties up to 50 per cent to fulfill the requirement of the existing grape wine industry. Considering, average rates received for grape wine during last year for export (APEDA) and domestic sales, the valueaddition has been found to vary from 444 per cent to 577 per cent of the value of grapes.