Fruzzanté represents the idea of ‘vocal for local’: Hill Zill Wines founder Priyanka Save

In an exclusive chat with G20, Priyanka Save, founder and director of Hill Zill Wines, talks about her endeavours. Excerpts:
Q. Tell us about your journey, and how you came up with Fruzzanté?
A. Fruzzanté is an idea that I came up with along with my husband, Nagesh Pai. When I came back from the United States, I realised that about 40% of the sapodilla fruit gets wasted at the farms from across Palghar due to poor rates and improper handling including our farm, and decided to do something about this problem. Since Chikoo had multiple issues that make it unfit for juices, jams, and jellies, together we came up with the idea of creating an alcoholic beverage made completely out of Chikoo. We are the first in the world to ever come up with this product and this was surely a very challenging journey. My husband and I spent years in R&D and experimentation to develop our first Chikoo sparkling alcoholic beverage. During our research, we came across Mr. Dominic Rivard, an award-winning winemaker from Canada who had written several books on wine-making and was known across the world. We approached him and he got excited about the product. The three of us worked together to bring this entirely new product to a completely new market within India. Thus, our brand Fruzzanté was born!
Q. How did Fruzzanté grow so quickly?
A. We started Fruzzanté in our family-owned resort the Hill Zill Resort. Our winery is attached to the resort. Initially, we experimented with Chikoo and starfruit and once the product was ready, we began to market it. The bottles were available in the market by the beginning of Jan 2017. Mumbai being our primary market we focussed on it extensively in the first year. We reached out to all the retails and big chains of Hotels across Mumbai. The response was pretty good and from there, we haven’t looked back.
Q. Tell us about your marketing and brand building and awareness strategies?
A. Fruzzanté is available across Maharashtra and very soon we will be present across Goa, Telangana, West Bengal, Punjab & Karnataka.
Our marketing and brand building strategies mostly involve on-ground activation and retail offers. We also regularly participate in various exhibitions and wine-related competitions where we meet up with sommeliers from all over the world. Fruzzanté is often part of many wine tasting sessions. In 2019, we did a Fruit Wine conference and food & wine pairing dinner where our products were paired along with different dishes with renowned Chef, Imamdar. Such events are something that we do regularly to showcase our products and increase our visibility. Apart from this, we are planning to host a wine tour session at our winery with a package of 1 day, 2 days, or even 3 days, depending upon the visitor’s preference.
Q. Does Fruzzanté benefit native fruit growers & farmers?
A. As a brand, Fruzzanté truly represents the idea of “vocal for local” and resonates with the Prime Minister of India’s Atmanirbhar yojana. Except for the Hydraulic machine at our winery every other machine that we use is from an Indian manufacturer. The fruit ripening chamber, crushing and pulping machine, also the bottling, and labelling machine, all our equipment’s are made in India. All our fruits are sourced locally and directly from the farmers to benefit the local
farmers. In-fact we work very closely with the Warli tribe from our region and use their help in our farms and the processing units. So, we like to believe that we are truly building a sustainable ecosystem that benefits everyone in the process. So far, we are working with 15 farmers across Maharashtra and have used over 50 tons of fruits in total this year from them. Once the market opens up and things start looking up, we will be naturally scaling up and we are sure this will, make a huge difference to the entire ecosystem.