| The Indians Drinking Wine? Are You Serious? | | | | By: kulpreet yadav | << back  Page 2 of 3 next >> |
Second, wine as a word to most Indians means anything alcoholic that is not beer. Therefore you find all along the Indian highways and elsewhere either wine shops, selling whiskey, Rum, Vodka and gin etc, or beer shops selling mostly beer spiked with alcohol for the much sought after kick. The understanding of the word wine to mean red, white, rose or sparkling wine is alien to almost ninety-nine percent of the Indians. Recently, at a wine tasting event at a five star hotel in New Delhi, one Californian guy, who said was visiting India to understand the Indian wine culture, narrated an unusual experience. Unusual for him, but most of us knew what was coming. He said, on his way back to Delhi after seeing the famous Taj Mahal he noticed a signboard on the roadside declaring the name of a wine shop. He brought the vehicle he was traveling in, to a screeching halt and entered the premise with much anticipation. But to his horror and disbelief the shop had everything else except wine. I am sure he must have since returned to his native country a much wiser man.
Third, the policy of the government not to allow advertisements to promote the wine industry products is a serous hiccup. Sommeliers, teachers, tasters, connoisseurs, who are all anyway in short supply, only end up meeting each other during the wine promotion events. Unless innovation, eye catching and educating campaign is not carried out by companies and wine promotion institutions in print, electronic and web media, any serious growth will always seem to be just a dream – similar to the picture I was talking about in the beginning.
So, in my opinion the industry should attempt a two pronged strategy – one, to reach to the people and educate them, and two, let them know the health benefits. Robert Joseph, the wine challenge creator, who had successfully conducted the first Indian wine challenge last December during the largest Food and wine event held at New Delhi called IFE 2007, recently shared his view with me and a few other friends. According to him, let there be some more wine challenges like the Indian wine challenge here in India. Let people find out what is good and what is not. Let promoters know what sells and what doesn’t. Let the producers know what is preferred and what is not. In other words, let the people and their tastes and choices related to wine drive the market. And there can be no better way for that than the wine challenges. Magandeep Singh, arguably India’s most renowned sommelier, shared his plan with me recently. Education, he says, holds the key. The hospitality sector and the consumers both needs to be educated. Subhash Arora, a die hard wine promoter and a personal friend of mine, who manages the Delhi Wine Club and also runs the Indian Wine Academy at Delhi, puts it all so easily. We have to get the view across to the people that wine is a healthier indulgence than hard liquor. He too is trying hard. There are many others like him, me included.
Touted as modern day Dorothy Parker, Fran Lebowitz’s comment, appeals most to the present Indian situation at the moment. She had said, “Great people talk about ideas, average people talk about things and small people talk about wine.” There are lots of great people in India (perhaps there always were) and they talk about great ideas now that they are beginning to get richer, also lots of average people taking about things, but hey, where are the Indian small people? Isn’t it a tad bit difficult to imagine that India doesn’t have them? On a more serious note, the Irish writer Robert Louis Stvenson once said, “Wine is bottled poetry”. It is common knowledge that Indians hold poetry and songs very dear and it reflects in their outlook towards life on a daily basis. Now, can someone really remove the bottle that is stuck in-between? Will the industry please stand up and realize this simple fact.
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