GIANACLIS, Egypt (dpa) – When Sebastien Boudry first set foot in the Egyptian winery Gianaclis two years ago, the young wine expert from Bordeaux was shocked.
In the wine cellar’s so-called cold-storage chambers temperatures reached up to 40 degrees Celsius. Not one of the 900 employees knew which grapes were growing where. And the wine served to the French visitor might have been acceptable in Bordeaux as vinegar.Today, Boudry says, the quality of the white wine, rosé and red wine produced by the winery’s remaining 150 workers has reached the level of a French vin du pays.“Back then the factory was, plainly stated, in catastrophic condition,” says Boudry, who in 1999 was sent to Egypt by the French company Ginestet in order to bring the winery up to scratch.It is the ambitious goal of the French consultants and the Egyptian investors to export wine from the land of the Pharoahs to Britain, Germany and France within two to three years.Until now, the winery’s entire production of between three and four million bottles per year has been sold in Egypt. Of that, ninety per cent goes to the tourism sector because most Egyptians for religious reasons consume no alcohol.Also, at 27 Egyptian pounds (6.4 dollars) per bottle, the Gianaclis wine is unaffordable for most natives. The reason for the high price is that wine is taxed at a rate of 100 per cent.But Boudry and the new owners of Gianaclis, the Al-Ahram Beverages Group, believe in the desert wine.They have installed two automatic presses and a modern cooling system and starting in January, 500 hectares are to be added to the existing 800 hectares of grapes growing near the Cairo-Alexandria Desert Road. The new grapes are bound for the export wine market.“The heat doesn’t hurt our grapes,” the Gianaclis faithful say, “It’s all just a question of irrigation.”The Gianaclis winery is named after its Greek founder, who the British Army brought to Egypt during the last century to make wine for its troops. The move caused the family business to thrive, boosting production to as many as ten million bottles per year. Between 1930 and 1950, the fine Nile wines even won several awards at Paris trade fairs.But then Gianaclis’ luck began to change.Under President Gamal Abdel-Nasser, the company was nationalised in 1961. The last Greek national at the winery, Alexander Konkolius, died in 1989. As business continued to deteriorate, investments were made in only the most crucial replacement parts.Then growing Islamic fundamentalism in the early 1990s led to difficulties with the bottom line as the winery produced just 2 million bottles a year.“Back then, the awful stuff was of rather inconsistent quality,” remembers one ten-year resident of Cairo from Germany, “Sometimes the red wine was so bad that you couldn’t even put it on your salad.”At Gianaclis’ absolute nadir, winery workers even tinted the white wine with hibiscus flowers and sold it as red.Up to now, Gianaclis has had three wines on the market, the red Omar Khayyam, the rosé Rubis d’Egypte and the Pinot Blanc Cru des Ptolemees.The winery is preparing a new product for export, the wooden-barrel-aged red wine Chateau Grand Marquis de Ginestet, on whose label the tiny word “Egypt” is barely legible.The fact that the Gianaclis wine operation, lying at the end of a bumpy country lane, can hardly be compared with a French “Chateau” does little to obstruct its marketing strategies.The little winery need not even worry about competition, because the Al-Ahram Beverages Group recently bought Gianaclis’ sole domestic competitor. But it was no winegrowing estate. It made wine from imported grape juice.
