India’s Wine Producers
Finding A Place In The World
By Lekha Rattanani
Contributing Editor
If it’s India, it must be whisky, rum, beer or vodka. Wine—well, not quite. Wine producers in India are slowly changing that perception.
It has taken producers several years to introduce a wine culture and build a nascent market for an array of Indian wines as they go about challenging the long held view that wine does not go well with the usually spicy Indian food.
There is still a long way to go before wine is a necessary part of every bar. But India’s bid to be a part of the wine world is on. An aged red wine was launched in January, a pink sparkling wine was introduced in late February, and India had its first wine festival the same month. The market is clearly responding, albeit not too fast.
A Small but Growing Market
India’s liquor market (excluding beer) is 65 million cases a year, according to industry estimates. Of this, wine occupies barely 0.5 percent at 300,000 cases a year. In terms of revenue, wine adds just about US $8.57 million to balance sheets in a total liquor market of US $1.429 billion. It is not surprising then that major companies are not pushing themselves to promote wine, though India is said to have a 2,000 year history of winemaking that thrived in the palaces of kings.
Today, just two producers dominate the wine business in India: Indage Limited, a 14-year-old company in Bombay which produces 11 wines, and Grover Vineyards Limited, which is based in the southern Indian city of Bangalore. The good news for the business is that these two are slowly making a name for Indian wine at home and abroad. Wine critic Jeffrey Benson, who was invited to India for the wine festival hosted by Indage in February, notes that there is a growing interest in Indian wines and they are increasingly being accepted in the UK market.
On the eve of the wine festival, which was held in the vineyards 180 km from Bombay, Indage announced it had signed joint venture agreements with Groupe Tallian of France, Wente Vineyards of California and Peter Mertes of Germany. Indage will bottle and market the wines produced by these three groups in India in the short run, and also plans to grow the grape varieties in India.
Wente Indage—a joint venture of Wente Vineyards and Champagne Indage Ltd.— is the first U.S. wine to be sold in India.
“The Indian market is fairly small in terms of volume right now. But I see a potential in the market. I see a long term opportunity,” Eric Wente of Wente Vineyards said during his visit to Bombay. Wente Vineyards, which claims a presence in 148 countries, hopes to bottle and market its wines in India through Indage. Groupe Tallian has a 200-year history and exports to 110 countries, and Peter Mertes, best known for German Riesling, produces 500,000 bottles a day. According to Wente, India is set to emulate the global move away from hard liquor options. This opens a huge market and explains the interest in India of foreign winemakers. French winemakers like Veuve Cliquot Ponsardin are already here in a venture with Grover Vineyards.
United Breweries Limited, a $1.2 billlion U.S. liquor group which has several leading liquor brands, markets red, rosé and white wine under the Bosca label, but these are certainly not its top products. The $190 million Shaw Wallace Group, also of the U.S., produces the Golconda brand, which once had a large market share but has since declined. In Goa, port wine made from caramel or grape pulp is commonly sold, sometimes in fancy packages like innovative clay jars, stylized bottles and even sachets. But these are small scale productions. Indeed, the Indian wine industry is not well organized or surveyed, making figures difficult to come by.
Changing Lifestyles
Though wine is a part of Indian folklore and legend, the more contemporary varieties before the 1970s were poor quality, sweet, homemade concoctions. Wine was always served in five star bars and restaurants. It was part of life and religion in the Christian majority Indian states of Goa in the West and several states in the far flung North East, but it was limited to those areas.
In the 1980s, the growing middle classes of India hesitantly appeared to join the global trend toward wine and white spirits. As increasing incomes changed lifestyles, drinking became more socially acceptable. Women began to join men in a drink. Wine came closer to the table, and wine drinking as a trend took root. These factors are even today helping move wine out of the traditional molds and fight the belief that wine and spicy Indian cuisine do not mix.
Indage’s sparkling wine Marquise de Pompadour is labeled Omar Khayyam for export markets.
“Our wines have a light, fruity suppleness and persistent finish as attested by international wine critics,” writes Karen Anand, a noted Indian food critic. Her latest book “Lean Cuisine Curries” was promoted in four Indian cities with lean cuisine brunches and wine, in keeping with Anand’s efforts to break the myth that wine is only good with European food. Eric Wente says Indian wine “runs the gamut from good to average, like any wine producing country.”
Because wine drinking has not been a common habit in Indian culture, there is a lack of general awareness. “Initially, selling wine was like running the marathon; there was no wine culture. People drank wine out of whisky glasses,” says Sham Chougule, chairman of Indage. It took Chougule more than a decade to promote wine, and that meant promoting it along with accoutrements such as wine glasses, corkscrews, champagne stoppers, and a booklet called “Appreciating Wines.” Now, many years after Chougule made his wine hobby into a business, he appears to be on the edge of a big opportunity.
In the early 1980s, Indage received help from a French blender named Raphael Brisbois and chose 240 acres of land in Narayangaon in the western Indian state of Maharashtra to locate its vineyards. In time, the vineyards have expanded to 600 acres. Here, from a base of transplanted root stocks—Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir and Ugni Blanc—and with technical assistance from France, the company makes about ten wines including the higher end Marquise De Pompadour and Joie sparkling wine brands. Indage has now introduced a new pink sparkling wine named Grande Cuvée de Millenium to its collection.
The company expects to turn out 2.5 million bottles in the 1999-2000 fiscal year. This is up 35 percent over 1998-99 and will meet domestic demand and cover export orders of one million bottles. Indage uses names from Indian history for its wine exports. For instance, a wine brand called Marquise de Pompadour in India is known abroad as Omar Khayyam. The wines are exported to many countries through a London-based distributor.
French Vines, French Traditions
At Grover Vineyards, the other big wine producing company in India, the French tradition is followed closely. “We were conscious that if you produce a good wine, there is a market,” says company director Kapil Grover. The Grover catch line “French Vines…French Traditions” is apparent all the way from vineyard to bottle.
French winemaker Georges Vesselle helped choose the location of the Grover vineyards after looking at 21 sites. The vineyards, spread over 100 acres, are located about 35 km from Bangalore, capital of Karnataka state. Grover Vineyards has a collaboration with Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin of France. VCP started out as technical consultants, but since 1996 have had a 20 percent stake in the company. Plants imported from France or generated from their stock are the base of Grover’s bottling story. There is also a French winemaking consultant based in Bangalore who oversees the whole operation from growing the grapes to bottling the wine. And chief enologist, consultant Michel Rolland spends at least two weeks each year in Bangalore to ensure that everything is on the right track.
Grover Vineyards recently introduced its first aged wine, La Reserve, from Cabernet Sauvignon grown near Bangalore, India.
Grover hopes to top last year’s turnout of 250,000 bottles for the domestic market by 30 to 40 percent. He plans to begin exporting four products, including a Cabernet Sauvignon, to the United States, the UK and Japan in mid-1999. The company’s latest offering is likely to elevate the image of India as a fine wine producing nation. Crafted in the Bordeaux tradition, La Reserve comes from a selection of the company’s oldest Cabernet Sauvignon vines.
Harvesters pick grapes grown from imported French vines at Grover Vineyards near Bangalore, capital of the southern Indian state of Karnataka.
“Like other countries, India started with white wine and is moving toward red. Rosé is a distant third, though suited to the tropics as it is served chilled,” says Kapil Grover. Prior to all the press about the health benefits of red wine, white wine made up more than 70 percent of Indian wine consumption. Now the balance between the two is more even.
Viticulturists can’t yet profile Indian wine drinkers but figure the market is growing about 15 percent every year. As India integrates with the rest of the world, wine may someday fulfill the dreams of its makers, and replace whisky at the head of the bar.
Lekha Rattanani is a Bombay, India-based journalist. She was assistant editor of “Outlook,” India’s second largest news weekly and principal correspondent for “India Today,” a well known news magazine.
Back to Wine Business Monthly
