BY S VENKAT NARAYAN
Our Special Correspondent
NEW DELHI, May 3: India is emerging as a fast growing market for luxury products such as expensive alcoholic beverages, luxury cars, perfumes etc.
Luxury cars such as Mercedes, Audi and BMW are now being manufactured in India. The three German-origin global brands are now fiercely competing amongst themselves to grab the top three slots as the best selling luxury automobiles in this country of 1,241 million people with a gross domestic product (GDP) of two trillion dollars.
Louis XIII de Remy Martin, the renowned French makers of Cognac and other famous alcoholic beverages, recently performed the global launch of a special Cognac christened Rare Cask 42.6 in Udaipur in India’s Rajasthan state for the first time in its 139-year history.
In recent weeks, the high-end beverages launched in this country include the Cattier brand of champagne, also from France.
Rare Cask 42.6 was unveiled in the famous city of lakes and royal palaces, at a glittering ceremony of pomp and show at an exclusive event in the presence of specially invited guests from across the globe.
Rare Cask 42.6 contains 42.6 percent of alcohol. Its discovery was confirmed by Louis XIII’s Cellar Master Ms Pierrette Trichet and her deputy Baptiste Loiseau after three years of hard work, testing and tasting.
The cognac is extracted from 1,200 eaux-de-vie (French for waters of life)—-a clear, colourless fruits brandy produced by means of fermentation and double distillation—-a hundred years in the making.
Rare Cask 42.6 boasts of aromas of plums and dates, mingling with flavours of gingerbread, prune stone and ginger, and a final touch of tobacco leaf too.
The quantity extracted is enough to fill just 738 decanters of 750ml each. Each decanter will be serial numbered from 001 to 738, and will be available from certified Louis XIII retailers, best palaces, hotels, and restaurants across the globe.
The suggested retail price of a single decanter is 18,000 Euros, or LKR 2.98 million! It will also be available by glass at similar exclusive places as a suggested retail price of 1,800 Euros, or LKR 2,98,800.
The billion-euro Remy Martin’s President Ms Dominique Heriard Dubreuil said her company’s products are being relished in India for over a century by the rich and famous, like maharajas and billionaires. But it set up shop in India only three years ago, and is now keen to expand in the Indian subcontinent and the Middle East.
Hence the choice of India as a venue to launch its most recent exclusive produce, she explained.
She expressed the hope that trade negotiations between India and the European Union will conclude, and an agreement signed soon so that taxes on French liquors and alcoholic beverages are reduced substantially, making them affordable to many more people.
She said her company has begun making whiskey too after acquiring a small company in Scotland. It will consider sponsoring sports like cricket to make its products known widely in this region.
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