By IANS,
Nacka/Stockholm : Indian spirits and beer are doing extremely well in Sweden and will be on display in a big way at the 17th Stockholm Beer & Whisky Festival 2008 beginning here Thursday.
“We are very glad that several brands of Indian spirits and beer are doing extremely well here,” Marianne Wallberg, project leader at the Stockholms Öl & Vin AB, organizers of the festival told IANS here.
Indian beer and spirits brands from companies such as Amrut Distilleries and Kingfisher breweries will be on display in one of the world’s largest beer and spirits festival.
“While Ashok Chokalingam, of the Amrut Distilleries will be here with us from tomorrow (Thursday), until the end of the festival September 27, I fear that the much awaited Vijay Mallya, of Kingfisher Breweries, will not make it even this year,” Wallberg said.
“Indubitably, this is the largest global fair, in its category” said Thomas Sundblom, chief executive of Clydesdale AB, Amrut’s stockers.
“During the festival, more than 25,000 visitors are going to come and taste our multitude of blends and brands,” he said.
Clydesdale exhibits over two hundred different whiskies of all hue, from the multi-malted to the heady, smoky highland singles.
Of the Indian spirits, Clydesdale stocks and markets four Amruts: Old Port Rum, Peated Single Malt, Single Malt and the Single Malt Cask Strength.
Pricewise, all the four Indian blends hold well with their peers like the various Johnny Walker Labels, at between Rs.100 to Rs.400 per 2 centi litres, an Indian small peg.
Indian Beer Brands – Flying Fox, Flying Fox Strong Beer and Kingfisher – are stocked and marketed by the Panogruppen AB and Monks Café & Brewery.
Apart from imbibing the mind and taste-buds boggling range of whiskies, calvados and beers that flow here, the mammoth fair also offers quite a few other benefits.
Practically every company that participates in the fair also offers viniculture courses and seminars apart from commercially promoting their products.
And they do it with great pride and panache, always sympathetic to the circumstances and constraints of respective global regions.