"There is no reason why wine should not be drunk with the food served in India (nor with its often slightly paler imitations in "Indian" restaurants outside the subcontinent). The wine should ideally be quite fruity and assertive. A subtle old claret is most definitely not the thing; a California Zinfandel or Australian Shiraz, or even a well-made sparkling wine, would be much more so." - Jancis Robinson,  (the definitive voice on wine).

India has 123,000 acres of vineyards, but only one per cent of this acreage is actually used for wine. The overall sales are around 400,000 cases a year of which 85 percent are table wines and the remaining are the expensive varieties…

Wine has been made in India for as many as 5,000 years. It was the early European travellers to the courts of the Mughal emperors Akbar, Jehangir and Shah Jehan in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries who reported tasting wines from the royal vineyards. Red wines were made from the arkesham grape and white wine from arkawati and bhokry grapes.

Under British influence in the nineteenth century, vineyards were established in Kashmir and at Baramati in Maharashtra and a number of Indian wines were exhibited and favourably received by visitors to the Great Calcutta Exhibition of 1884.

However, Indian vineyards were totally destroyed by phylloxera in the 1890s. It took nearly half a century to replant them. Today, lineal descendants of some of these historic wines are produced by Chateau Indage, India's largest producer of wine, as well as by Grover Vineyards. Shaw Wallace too is a traditional wine manufacturer.

India has now 123,000 acres of vineyards, but only one per cent of this acreage is used for wine. However, that does not mean the wine market in the country isn't maturing. Today the overall sales are around 400,000 cases a year. Table wines account for 85 percent of the market and expensive varieties of vintage wines account for the remaining 15 per cent.

However, as compared to other wine-producing nations this is a very low figure. Indian wines have a lot of catching up to do.

The flip side of the industry is that of the 400,000 cases sold every year, only 30,000 cases of sparkling wine and champagne are consumed in India. In contrast the figures of other drinks are: 37 million cases of whisky, 11 million cases of brandy and nine million cases of rum. Industry officials believe that the market will grow rapidly once the government drops import duties on bulk (currently at 108 per cent) and on bottled wines (currently 264-420 per cent).

One of the other reasons why wine drinking has not caught on is that quality wines are priced relatively high.  Since the volumes are low, production costs are high, as are taxes. 

Thus the real challenge for winemakers in India is to develop a domestic market, and that is where the problem arises. First, people believe wine and curry do not go well. "It is a myth," says Thomas Abraham, F & B Manager of Delhi's Hyatt Regency hotel. " The truth is most Indians prefer beer, whiskey or rum over wine and champagne. That's why the per capita consumption of wine in India is very low."

In exports, says Aman Dhal, one of India's leading wine importers and distributors, Indian winemakers face a peculiar problem. " Traditionally wine lovers around the world have some kind of a mental block against Indian wines. They are just not comfortable with the Made in India tag."

However, Oz Clarke, one of the presenters of the BBC's Food and Drink programme, refutes that. " Western wine drinkers are some of the most imaginative aficionados in the world. I think when they see Made in India, they won't say: "What a weird idea." They'll say: "Fantastic! I haven't tried it. Give me some." In fact, one of Chateau Indage's most popular wine, Omar Khayam, is in the British market for a decade now!

A spokesman of spirit major McDowell that also distributes imported wine in the Indian market, says that wine imports --both bulk and bottled --have gathered momentum in the last three years. Growth rates, he claims, have touched 25 percent per annum in the last few years. " Volumes are driven mainly by Indian wines that are priced below Rs 150 per bottle," he adds

McDowell's, in fact, has an agreement with Concha Y Toro, the largest producer of wine in Chile for importing wine. The company is represented in the Indian market by two premium brands, Bosca Reisling and Red & Rose.

Though Shaw Wallace's Golconda has a 25 per cent market share, the leader is Chateau Indage, a diversified Indian public company with interests in viticulture and wine distribution. The company manufactures 12 types of wine and owns vineyards spread over 600 acres south-west of Mumbai.

Grover Vineyards, in Dodballapur, 40 km north of Bangalore at the foot of the Nandi hills, on the other hand, uses French grapes Vitis Vinifera in its vineyards in Bangalore. It exports wine worth $435,000 every year. "The Grover range produced from high-altitude vineyards north of Bangalore, with help from the ubiquitous Michel Rolland of Pomerol, is extremely respectable. The reds, particularly the Reserve red, are a distinct notch above the slightly dull Clairette-based white."

For those who curl up their nose at Indian wines, the advise would be not to write off the local offerings. The consumption is increasing though ever too small. Sham Chougule, the chairman of Chateau Indage puts it succinctly, " It's about half a teaspoon per head. The day it becomes one litre, the market will be one billion litres."

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