Companies in Nigeria seldom outlive their founders. In a country where wine consumption is evolving, any company selling wine should have a short run. But Ekulo International, which owns Ekulo Wine World, has been putting clarets and champagnes on dinner tables across Nigeria for 30 years.
Ingram Osigwe explores this upscale wine shop on Victoria Island, Lagos.
A good wine gets better with age, so connoisseurs say. By that logic, it is true to say, also, that a company in the business of putting the best wines and spirits on the dinner table of consumers should get better with time.
This is especially true of one company in Nigeria that has been delighting the palates of drinkers with choice wines and spirits for decades. Ekulo International has been devoted to that for 30 long years.
By every reckoning, three decades is enough time to judge whether a company will do well or not, fall by the wayside or blossom like a tree planted by a river bank. Ever since it dispensed the first cases of wine to wine lovers from a poky shop in one unremarkable part of Lagos in 1983, Ekulo Group has grown to become one of the best distributors and suppliers of the best wines from cellars in Europe and other continents.
Wide range
Ekulo stocks any grape type: Barbera, Cabernet Franc, Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon, Moscato, Montepulciano, Merlot, Pinotnoir, Sangiovese, Sauvignon Blanc or Syrah.
They come from as farther afield as Okanagan Valley in Canada, Maipo Valley in Chile, Tuscany Italy, Napa Valley United States, Loire Valley France, Douro Valley Portugal, Hunter Valley Australia, Western Cape, South Africa or Andalucia Spain.
The company operates from 1393 Tiamiyu Savage Street, a choice part of Victoria Island Lagos; set in the cool breezy bar-beach environs, with gentle tropical sea currents providing ambient daily temperatures and a relaxing clime.
Ekulo dispenses choice wines and spirits to thousands of connoisseurs across Nigeria and other parts of the West African coast.
Insistence on quality drinks is a company policy adhered to by all involved in the process of providing customers with the best wines, champagnes, and spirits.
There is a story about the French community in Lagos, from diplomats to culture workers and technicians, sending their servants to Cotonou in Benin Republic for their Burgundy and Bordeaux wines.
The inference is that for those with a special knack for the best wines in the world, wines and spirits on the Nigerian market are almost certainly plonk. But the number of foreigners and Nigerians snapping up wines at Ekolu tells a different story.
“Our involvement in wines and spirits is informed by a strong passion for quality and a sense of calling,” said Emeka Oramadike, Marketing Manager of Ekulo Group of Companies.
“The aim is to create a foundation and a reference point for all things pertaining to high culture liqueur in the region, from ensuring the availability of all noteworthy brands and their accessories to fostering a connoisseurship and collectorship culture and creating a safe haven for authentic products and quality brands in an environment that is hopelessly flooded with fakes.”
Sole franchise
The company has sole franchise of selling the best of wines from European vineyards, including Campari, Mateus Rose, Glenfiddich and Stolichnaya.
Among its over 2,000 different brands are Thomas Barton, Freixenet, Mouton Cadet, St Remy, Escudo Rojo, Laurent Perrier, White horse, Veuve clicquot, Ace of the spades, Lamothe Parrot, Grey Goose Vodka, Glenfiddich, Remy Martin, Crema de Alba, Cristal, Martini, and Baron de Valls.
It also stocks locally produced brands that meet international standards. Its premium fruit juice, Don Simon, is readily available in four variants.
“Ekulo has been in the business of wine importation, supplies and distribution for over 30 years and has been responsible for the first crop of vintage drinks imported into the country,” said Pawan Moudgil, Head of Sales and Marketing.
“This highly specialised marketing enterprise has been responsible for exposing the first taste buds in Nigeria to modern European quality liqueur.
“Ekulo Wine World is borne out of a strong desire to make available to discerning Nigerians the most sought after brands all over the world, not only in liqueur, but in all other consumable commodities as well.
“There is a strong drive in the company to bring home to the Nigerian clime the best wine culture as it obtains elsewhere, especially in the West.”
Teaching wine culture
The company intends to also teach devotees how to savour the best wines. Nigerians sometime quaff wines as if they are guzzling lagers. But Samuel Johnson, he of literary fame in eighteenth century England, sagely opined that “a good wine should not be taken in tumblers, you sip it.”
Johnson, who was widely travelled and knowledgeable about a thousand and one things, was familiar with the medicinal values of wine. Taken in large quantities at once cancels out such medicinal values.
Oramadike equally advises that drinking wine is different from drinking beer. Lager can be taken in gulps, wine cannot.
Resveratrol, a chemical component, is found in most wines. It is also beneficial to the body. But those who gulp wine are at the risk of losing the potential benefit.
“To benefit fully from the resveratrol in wine,” said Oramadike, “it is recommended to sip slowly when drinking. Due to inactivation in the gut and liver, most of the resveratrol consumed while drinking red wine do not reach blood circulation.
“However, when sipping slowly, absorption via the mucus membranes in the mouth can result in up to 100 per cent increment in blood levels of resveratrol.”
A rising middle class in Nigeria has led to a corresponding rise in wine drinkers. Unless you are a connoisseur, you may not know that people collect wines as they obsessively collect art works or vintage cars. However, at the moment, there is no exact number of Nigerian collectors of wines.
“It is better to be alone than in bad company,” George Washington, one of the founding fathers of America, once declared. Though wine was far from Washington’s mind when he made that declaration, it is a maxim Ekulo adopts in marketing wine.
“We are proud to be a cut above the rest in what we do. We will not stop being so for our customers as long as the company exists,” Moudgil pledged.
Wine accessories
Ekulo also stocks wine accessories, because a good wine culture goes with a lot of its own basic accessories, from wine glasses and cork screws; there is need for some sense of class in the equipment that goes with one’s collection.
Wine glasses are made of stemware which includes champagne flutes, chalices, and goblets as well as cocktail glasses.
Red wine is best consumed cool, but not necessarily cold. White wines and champagnes are better served chilled. To facilitate the maintenance of your wine at the ambient temperature, wine coolers are recommended. They are called cellars.
They replicate the appropriate temperature and humidity. They allow users to select ideal temperatures for their wine.
