Wine tonight, my dear?

We have seen it with clothing and entertainment and now it seems that the Trinidadian propensity for brands has extended one step further into the ultimate realm of sophistry : wines. In groceries, the bottles are taking up more shelf space than previously and lately more wine tasting seems to be on the agenda of the well-heeled. While our palettes might have become more discerning, the main players in the local wine industry are claiming that the preference for things foreign and preferential tariffs is making it hard for them to flourish.
Mark Hopkins, Chief Executive Officer of Caribbean Cellars Limited, Diego Martin, describes this as the Trinidadian “post colonial legacy,” which sees locals basically seeking security from imported goods. In an interview, he said that a lack of self-identity led many locals  to shop on the basis of brand or label recognition.

This, he said, led to the local identity being displaced by foreign values. “The main problem,” Canadian-born Hopkins maintained, “is that locals don’t want to buy equally good quality products produced locally, but instead seek a sense of security from imported goods. And this has caused us to lose a lot of ground in the local market.” Caribbean Cellars has been on the local market since 1999, established by Hopkins and his Trinidadian wife. It deals mainly in the production of tropical fruit wines and grape wines for a primarily local market, although the company does have a small export industry in Grenada. It also provides the public with wine making supplies and equipment. A number of Caribbean islands, Hopkins said, have a thriving, indigenous wine industry. This is not the case in Trinidad, where imports rule the roost. Around Christmas time, he said, there are some local companies which make the cherry brandies and ponche de creme, but most of the vintages are imported. He said that there was previously a local brand of wine which was eventually taken over by a company in Guyana, and is now imported into Trinidad by another major alcohol company. The owner of another wine producing company shares Hopkins’s sentiments. Pref-erring to remain unnamed, she noted that many locals want to drink wine but view anything local with an air of skepticism. “They are a bit snobbish when it comes to our processes,” she said, “thinking that it is not good because it is made here, as opposed to a brand name wine.” “Very often our product may be better, but some people have trouble wrapping their minds around the fact that this is okay. This has been a really serious challenge for us,” she added. The perception of locals varies significantly from that of foreigners or expats, she said. These expats are more versed in the properties of a fine wine and therefore accept the locally produced brands on quality rather than label. “These people,” she said, “are not ashamed to put these local wines on their dinner tables when they have guests. But the people who don’t know all that much about wines tend to have a problem, maybe because they feel that people are going to laugh at them.”

Another aspect to this problem, she maintained, was people going to restaurants, asking for the house wine and then demanding to know the brand of the respective wine. House wines are generally bought by restaurants from producers at a cheaper price and served with the restaurant’s label rather than that of the producer. White wines tend to be Chardonnay and red Merlot. “This is how it is done in foreign wine-producing countries,” she said, “where producers sell to the restaurants.” Here, however, the local population tends to ask what brand the house wine is. This is a challenge for us, because if it is local they very rarely accept it.” The challenges for the local wine industry do not end here, however. Local producers also face serious competition from the importation of cheaper, bulk wines.

Anthony Jardine, managing director of the Trinidadian franchise of the Canadian company Wine Not Limited, St James, explained that these “bag and box wines” are imported in large jugs in excess of two liters, under special preferential tariffs of five percent on the Cost of Import Freight (CIF). However, the local producers are subjected to an excise tax of $10.35 per liter. “This industry,” he said, “is being penalised in favour of the importation of bulk finished wines.” Hopkins agreed, saying said that these imports were flooding the market. “There is less duty to pay on imported wines than on locally produced wines,” he said. “We are basically competing against large multinational wine companies which can put out wines in large quantities and they pay less taxes than we do.” “This,” he said, “has stunted the industry’s ability to grow.”