Camilleri Wines completes two-year equipment upgrade

Camilleri Wines has completed a two-year project to upgrade equipment at its Naxxar winery at an investment running into hundreds of thousands of euros, just weeks before this year's vendemmia, the group's marketing manager Claudio Camilleri told The Sunday Times.

The new equipment includes a closed cylinder soft press, a tube-in-tube refrigeration system, a new packer, and six new wine vats of various sizes. The vats will help increase and better distribute the capacity of the wine; smaller vats will allow the winery to experiment with new varieties and blends.

"Some pieces of equipment were added on to our existing infrastructure, others were intended as an upgrade," Mr Camilleri said on Friday. "This substantial investment is part of our quest to achieve a better product and to enhance production methods."

Asked about the 2009 vendemmia, Mr Camilleri said the group's wine-maker and viticulturist were confident that the harvest would be similar in quality, if not better, than last year's, thanks to the very wet winter.

Mr Camilleri said Camilleri Wines were this year consolidat-ing their vast range and the vendemmia would contribute to the production of the Palatino, Laurenti, Blush, Pianoforte, GWL, La Croce, and Dolce Vita varieties.

The wine business has not been immune to the economic downturn and Mr Camilleri said the firm had suffered "a lot" where its tourist-related products, like its traditional liqueurs, were concerned. The domestic market had not been hit as badly.

"Over the last two years, we have been able to boost our customer base and we have managed to gain a solid foothold in our target markets," he said. "We still face strong competition from foreign wines. Malta presents a unique scenario and consumers are able to choose from a considerably vast range of wines compared to other countries. Foreign wines available locally include wines from all regions and across all price ranges, including premium and rare wines.

"From a production perspective, it means we have to work harder as the bar rises further."

Mr Camilleri believed Maltese wine was capable of standing its ground against foreign competition and emphasised the need for producers, farmers and the government to work harder to elevate the sector's profile.

"We really need to work on the 'Malta' aspect - our wow factor, so to speak," he stressed.

"It is very intriguing for visitors to discover that an extremely small country like ours has its own government, its own language and products like its very own wines. We do not really have a micro-climate to boast of but we have our own identity in wine-making and it is important that we do not lose that."

Meanwhile, Camilleri Wines last week launched its Palatino Sauvignon Blanc and Merlot varieties in screw cap bottles. Mr Camilleri said the initiative was a bold experiment - Camilleri Wines was the first Maltese winery to launch the screw cap bottle for a wine in this particular bracket.

Just 2,667 bottles of each variety were launched on the market in screw-cap bottles and distributed to selected on- and off-trade merchants, including restaurants, retailers, hotels and caterers.