Celebrating wines

SulaFest is not really a wine festival anymore - it's now a landmark music festival, with bands such as Gentleman's Dub Club performing to capacity crowds

This has been the season for wine festivals: Grape Escapades in Panjim, Goa, that took place between January 23 and 25, the landmark SulaFest held at its Nashik winery on February 7 and 8, the Pune Wine Tasting Festival on February 15, the Great Grover Wine Festival in Bengaluru that took place on February 21, and lastly the Mumbai Wine Festival, re-scheduled for March 14 and 15 at the Radio Club, Colaba.

Wine Festivals in India are a recent phenomenon and are completely different from wine fairs held overseas. The signature European wine fairs (Prowein in Dusseldorf, Vinitaly in Verona, the London Wine Fair, and Vinexpo in Bordeaux) are all largely B2B affairs, where producers from all over the world showcase their latest vintage to business buyers (and hence are held between March and June). These are massive undertakings: they attract tens of thousands of visitors and facilitate millions of euros or dollars of business.

The wine fairs in India, on the other hand, are B2C affairs directed at consumers. Participants tend to largely be Indian wine companies (or a single wine company, in the case of SulaFest or the Grover event), and there's a carnival-like atmosphere - live bands and DJs, grape stomping (table grapes, of course), food stalls, counters selling knick knacks, and so on. No attempt is made to set aside a day for business/ trade visitors, and there are precious few, if any, seminars or 'knowledge events'.

Still, our home-grown events play an invaluable role in making consumers aware of the various new wines available in India and also in enabling a tasting of different wines or from different producers. As is only right, the 'festivals' are being held in places which record the highest consumption of wine. And, they're a lot of fun - that's what wine should be for consumers, most of whom don't really want to start off by getting too serious about aroma and taste, but just want to enjoy the stuff.

SulaFest is not really a wine festival anymore - it's now a landmark music festival at the Sula winery, and has attained the sort of cult status like the Sunburn music events: in 2015 over 10,000 people attended the two days of music, wine, food and revelry, with 20 international artistes performing to a capacity crowd. This was the 7th year of SulaFest and it just keeps getting bigger and better every year.

Grape Escapades, also started a few years back, is organised by Goa Tourism, and has been seeing an increasing number of wineries (all Indian) and visitors each year. The venue is very central (Campal, Panjim), there are bands playing and dancers performing, and this year they had some 14 wineries (including three Goan units) participating - but it's a government-managed affair, which cannot have that spark.

The Pune Wine Tasting Festival started three years ago, because of the efforts of Sankaranarayanan, convenor of Pune Gourmet, and seems to have found a permanent venue at the Rohi Villa Palace, Koregaon Park. I counted 15 wine stalls at the event this year (Sula was conspicuous by its absence), notwithstanding the fact that attendance was thin due to the ongoing India-Pakistan World Cup match.

The Great Grover Wine Festival in Bengaluru was held for the first time - the venue, Bharatiya City, was too far and the ticket prices (Rs 1,000 a head) were too high for people to come all the way for an unknown event, but full marks for the effort.

Wines I've been drinking: The Grover Vijay Amritraj White 2014 along with winemaker Karishma Grover at the Bengaluru winery a month back. A 100 per cent Viognier, with 40 per cent matured in barrels, the wine is aromatic and super-smooth, with an almost full-bodied mouthfeel and lots of peach & apple featuring all round. I gave it 92 points ("Outstanding") - at Rs 1,100 in Bengaluru it's definitely worth a try.

Alok Chandra is a Bengaluru-based wine consultant