What fits the bill for sipping on a warm evening is a chilled white or rose - even a sparkling wine that's not too bubbly

Beat the heat

Business Standard

I've written a lot about grape wines, but rarely ventured into the field of 'native' alcoholic beverages from either India or the Far East for many reasons: unfamiliarity, unavailability, and perhaps just plain old-fashioned prejudice.It's a fact that most Indians are totally unfamiliar with 'native' alcoholic beverages, both in India and further east. For one, the excise system here actively discourages indigenous alcoholic beverages simply because they are a pain to monitor and yield lower revenues (than the stuff from the 'organised' sector). Two, native alcoholic beverages from further afield (China, Japan, Korea) are just not available - and even if they were, it's likely that nobody would buy them as they taste different. So just what are we talking about?Palm wine (toddy)Possibly the oldest alcoholic beverage in the world, palm wine is made by fermenting the sap of various species of the palm tree including the palmyra (wine palm), coconut palm, and date palm trees. The sap is t

Embrace the native

Wines made from grapes harvested the previous autumn in Europe and North America are ready for tasting in spring, and the major exhibitions in Europe are all scheduled pre-summer: there's ProWein Dusseldorf (March 24-26), the famous en primeur tasting of Bordeaux Crus (April 8-12), Vinitaly Verona (April 1-10), the London International Wine Fair (May 20-22), and lastly Vinexpo in Bordeaux (June 16-20).These wine fairs are huge, with hundreds of participating wineries and thousands of visitors. While primarily "B2B (business-to-business)" forums where importers, distributors, retailers, and the hospitality trade get to meet the producers, sample their wines and place orders for the coming year, these fairs also provide a brilliant opportunity for ordinary consumers to taste wines from all over the world.ProWein Dusseldorf (March 24-26)Dusseldorf is Germany's financial and international business centre and renown for its fashion and trade fairs: the Messe Dusseldorf company organises nea

Time to raise your glass

Wine grapes in India are harvested during February-April, versus September-October elsewhere in the northern hemisphere (Europe and the US) â€” in this sense we are like the industry â€œdown underâ€ (the southern Hemisphere â€” Australia, South Africa, South America) where, too, the 2013 harvest is currently going on.In India we have to prune the grape vines twice annually: once after the harvest, and again in September to prepare for the harvest 120/150 days later â€” this is as the vine continues to grow all year round here, unlike in the colder climates of the classical wine-producing countries (where grape vines become dormant during their winters). Of course, in actual practice some vineyards here may prune early and so harvest as early as January, while others may postpone this till even May.In any case, wine grapes have to be harvested at peak phenolic ripeness to maximise the quality of the wine produced â€” this is particularly important for red wine g

Grape harvest time in India

Did you know that till just 50 years back (1960), the largest wine exporter in the world was Algeria, not France, Italy, Spain or even Australia?Coming across the eponymous article in www.wine-economics.org  by Giulia Meloni and Johan Swinnen, I couldnâ€™t resist reading it in its 42-page entirety, and am taking the liberty of delivering a prÃ©cis of what surely is one of the most fascinating tales of endeavour and heartbreak in the wine world.France annexed Algeria in 1830, and fought a bloody insurgency there from 1954 till 1962, when Algeria attained independence. While French settlers in Algeria up to the 1860s did try to grow wine grapes and produce wine, they were mainly ex-army personnel with little knowledge or experience and did not meet with any marked success.However, the onset of Phylloxera (caused by a microscopic aphid that destroyed the roots of wine grapes) in Europe from the mid-1860s resulted in widespread devastation of vineyards t

The politics of wine

Given the ban on using normal media channels for marketing wine (indeed, any alcoholic beverage) in India, producers and importers fall back on one-on-one methods: tastings at fairs and promotions and wine dinners.

Wine and dine

Chillers are a good way to store wines&nbsp;- at least for fussy oenophiles with deep pockets. Alok Chandra lists out what they should be looking for, why and where.

Make way for wines

W hile most wine drinkers keep only a few bottles of wine (if any) at home, there comes a time when you may want to have the luxury of picking and choosing from your own private wine cellar rather than have to go rushing off to the nearest wine shop whenever guests are over for dinner.

Your own wine cellar

It is a paradox that as the amount of information about any subject available online has grown, so has the need for people or agencies to filter this information &mdash; to channel the flood, as it were, so as to provide a stream of knowledge that is more comprehensible to the novice.

Wines and the Internet

With the year-end festive season upon us and the media exhorting all &ldquo;to be of good cheer&rdquo;, it would be useful to review what the pitfalls are of being &ldquo;high spirited&rdquo; in India &mdash; something normally brought home to a reveller if/when pulled up by cops for testing blood alcohol content (BAC).

All about drinking and driving

As another year draws to a close, it is fitting to talk not about the past, but the future. And, so, here&rsquo;s a selection of Indian wines to watch out for next year.

Ring in the new

Foreigners coming to India for the first time get briefed on &ldquo;Indianisms&rdquo;: cultural traits that are distinctive to us Indians.

We are like that only

No, this article has nothing to do with either the American Midwest or the Great Depression of the 1930s in the US as portrayed by John Steinbeck&rsquo;s award-winning novel. It is merely an attention-grabbing title, much like the recent headlines that screamed &ldquo;India to allow cheaper wines from Europe&rdquo;.

The grapes of wrath

Although efforts have been made to export Indian wines for 25 years, the &ldquo;balance of trade&rdquo; between Indian wines exported and imported wines is still terribly one-sided, with only about 35,000 cases exported against some 300,000 cases of wines imported into India in 2011-12. The value would be even more skewed, since Indian wines tend to be priced at $3-4 per bottle (FOB or free on board), whereas there are many high-end wines coming in for star hotels.

A taste for vintage India

Singapore Airlines recently hosted a unique event: a tasting of 10 Grand Cru Burgundies for 35 journalists and wine writers from around the world, tutored by three masters of wine (MWs): Steven Spurrier, Jeannie Cho Lee, and Michael Hill Smith.

Drinking with the masters

Food Lovers Bangalore Magazine recently undertook a four-month long effort to identify the best restaurants in Bangalore. Titled &ldquo;The Nine Hills Food &amp; Wine Showcase 2012&rdquo;, it culminated last Saturday in a seven-course sit-down dinner for 175 people at the Leela Palace, Bangalore.

Wines to lift the spirits

A study published in 2003 in Annals of Oncology that states that &ldquo;a single glass of wine every day for a year could trigger breast cancer and other tumours&rdquo; has hit the headlines recently.

Let's drink to that!

Last week I visited seven wineries in Nashik and Bangalore and tasted about 100 wines from nine different wineries &mdash; part of an effort to identify good Indian wines suitable for export.

A toast to Indian wines

Big Banyan wines are unique as they source the grapes from the Nashik area, but produce and bottle the wines in Goa, while deriving their inspiration from an actual 400-year old Banyan tree 30 km from Bangalore, off the road to Mysore.

Alok Chandra: High on Indian wines

Whether a wine is good or bad, Indian or imported, it needs to first be sold to the &ldquo;trade&rdquo; (retailers and/or hotels/restaurants/clubs) before they reach the consumer, there being (as yet) few provisions in India for direct sales from a winery to the public.

Deficits of the trade

A &ldquo;Reserve&rdquo; wine is simply one which has not been released for sale immediately after the wine is ready, but has been kept back for further maturation in cask and bottle for a given time period. Generally, the basic quality of a Reserve wine would be better (than, say, &ldquo;Regular&rdquo; wines) &mdash; it would be made from the best-quality grapes, and processed a little differently (more extraction and body, higher alcohol).

Alok Chandra

Alok Chandra

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