It's raining wines

Top-end wines seem to be raining down on lucky wine consumers in India in October. This fortnight, it is the turn of Four Seasons Wines to unveil its Vintner's Reserve Select Barrels 2011 wine, a Cabernet-Shiraz blend that has spent two years in oak casks and another two years in the bottle.

As some people may know, Four Seasons is the wine company set up some years back by United Spirits (USL), whose former chairman, Vijay Mallya, had also acquired French winery Bouvet Ladubay and whose United Breweries had launched the now-defunct Kingfisher Bohemia wines.

Four Seasons had recruited Abhay Kewadkar in 2004 from Grover Vineyards to head its wine division as well as make its wines. The company's entry strategy entailed setting up a one million-litre capacity winery near Baramati, Maharashtra, to produce wines, which were launched in 2008 under the Four Seasons Classic and Four Seasons Barrique Reserve labels.

For whatever reason, the Four Seasons wines never really caught on, despite great packaging, a well-orchestrated marketing campaign, and the USL distribution muscle that ensured wide availability all over India - though by 2014, it claimed sales of over 100,000 cases. Perhaps it was because their wines were initially produced elsewhere, or perhaps because the USL sales organisation was used to computing volumes in cases and could not (or did not want to) get to grips with a product that sold by the bottle and spoilt if kept too long in the store or on shelves.

However, the company seems to finally have got it right with its latest offering.

Its Vintner's Reserve Select Barrels 2011 is, in a word, delicious. Complex aromas of black fruits and berries from the Cab and spice from the Shiraz mingle with oak and vanilla notes from the barrels. On the palate, it is smooth and full-bodied, with mellow tannins and the fruit coming through for a soft and extended finish. The wine is almost sweet on the tongue: not too dry or tannic, and the 14.5 per cent alcohol is well balanced and does not intrude. It is priced at Rs 1,500 in Bengaluru and well-worth the price - anyone who likes red wines should try.

The top end of the market for Indian wines is getting more crowded by the day as wineries rush to launch cask-matured "Reserve wines", generally priced upwards of Rs 1,000 per bottle. The argument here is that if consumers can pay that much for imported wines, why should Indian wines be left behind?

So there are now two still-wine magnums (1.5 litres): Grover's Insignia (Rs 5,000) and the Krsma Cabernet Sauvignon (Rs 3,500). There are also the Zampa Chene Grand Reserve (Rs 1,850), the Fratelli Sette (Rs 1,6420), two Fratelli Vitae blends (Rs 1,500 each), the Krsma Cab (Rs 1,500), Sula's Rasa Shiraz (Rs 1,350), Grover's Vijay Amritraj Collection (Rs 1,395), and sundry other offerings from Charosa and York and Vallonne and Revielo and Big Banyan. Whew!

And, as they say, "You ain't seen nothing yet." Since imported wines suffer both customs (currently 160 per cent) and state duties, consumers pay a lot more for imported wines than for the domestic drop - despite which people still tend to equate higher prices with better quality. This has encouraged local producers to start marketing reserve wines at prices equal to those of regular imported wines - and stealing market share from imported wines in the process. This trend will continue, so be prepared to see more top-end wines being launched in the years to come.

Alok Chandra is a Bengaluru-based wine consultant