Indian Love Beads…and Cabernet

Bulls lumber down dusty roads, cow-dung patties bake in the sun, and women in bright saris pluck grapes from manicured fields, their bangles jangling with every toss.

Welcome to India’s wine country. Scores of vineyards have sprouted in India, whose population has developed a taste for wine. Nashik, a small town in western India, long famous for its grapes, has become the subcontinent’s Sonoma Valley, the heart of a US$100mil (RM320mil) industry that has seen annual growth of more than 25% annually since 2003. You’re kidding, right?

A taste for wine is now a sign of sophistication among Indians who have grown wealthy as the economy has boomed, and scores of wineries have opened in recent years to quench their thirst.

“This is an industry whose time has come,” said Rajeev Samant, the CEO and founder of Sula Vineyards, one of India’s leading wine producers. “With more education and more affluence, it’s very natural for a population to drink more wine.”

The wine business is still relatively small, especially considering India’s population of 1.1 billion. In 2006, Indian winemakers sold roughly 940,000 cases of wine domestically and 60,000 cases overseas, up from 530,000 domestic cases and 30,000 overseas in 2003, according to industry figures (by comparison, American vintners shipped 217 million cases to domestic markets in 2007 and another 50 million cases overseas) There are now more than 50 wineries in India, nearly all in the western state of Maharashtra, and the wine boom has created a new crop of wine bars, tasting rooms and vineyard tours, which are slowly beginning to attract tourists. I can’t wait to taste some of them, when they reach our shores, hopefully sooner than later. The new latitude winemakers are still relatively unknown compared with the traditional European powers of France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Portugal, and they lag behind even the New World producers from Argentina, Australia, Chile, New Zealand, South Africa and the United States.

China and Brazil, the two biggest players among the new crop of wine-producing nations, produce just 6.7 million hectoliters, or 2.4 percent of the world’s annual output, according to figures from the International Wine and Spirit Record, a London-based research company.

Still, wine is becoming more popular in countries like Brazil, China and India because of a growing middle class and publicity about its health benefits. Drink on!

A taste for wine is now a sign of sophistication among Indians who have grown wealthy as the economy has boomed, and scores of wineries have opened in recent years to quench their thirst.

“This is an industry whose time has come,” said Rajeev Samant, the CEO and founder of Sula Vineyards, one of India’s leading wine producers. “With more education and more affluence, it’s very natural for a population to drink more wine.”

The wine business is still relatively small, especially considering India’s population of 1.1 billion. In 2006, Indian winemakers sold roughly 940,000 cases of wine domestically and 60,000 cases overseas, up from 530,000 domestic cases and 30,000 overseas in 2003, according to industry figures (by comparison, American vintners shipped 217 million cases to domestic markets in 2007 and another 50 million cases overseas) There are now more than 50 wineries in India, nearly all in the western state of Maharashtra, and the wine boom has created a new crop of wine bars, tasting rooms and vineyard tours, which are slowly beginning to attract tourists. I can’t wait to taste some of them, when they reach our shores, hopefully sooner than later. The new latitude winemakers are still relatively unknown compared with the traditional European powers of France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Portugal, and they lag behind even the New World producers from Argentina, Australia, Chile, New Zealand, South Africa and the United States.

China and Brazil, the two biggest players among the new crop of wine-producing nations, produce just 6.7 million hectoliters, or 2.4 percent of the world’s annual output, according to figures from the International Wine and Spirit Record, a London-based research company.

Still, wine is becoming more popular in countries like Brazil, China and India because of a growing middle class and publicity about its health benefits. Drink on!