There&rsquo;s nothing quite like a candle-lit dinner for two at a fine-dining restaurant, with good food and a nice bottle of wine, to celebrate that most ancient of sentiments: love.

Valentine wines

Business Standard

Last week I visited what surely is the best and biggest new winery in India in the last 10 years: Alpine Winery, situated about 120 km from Bangalore, off the road to Mysore.

In the Alpine winery

Private, secret, or exclusive dining clubs have existed for as long as civilisation. Ancient Greece had the symposion or drinking party (the word symposium today has acquired a very different meaning, the eating and drinking having largely been done away with); London has had the Bullingdon Club of Oxonians for over 200 years (infamous for trashing &mdash; and paying for &mdash; the restaurants where they dined); Bangalore today has the Chaine des Rotisseurs and The Bangalore Black Tie.

The exclusive clubs

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).

Special reservations

The Bangalore Club is one of the premiere clubs in India, on par with the likes of the Delhi Gymkhana Club and the Bombay Gymkhana, all of which were established by the British nearly 150 years ago. The members of these establishments are convivial but conventional &mdash; very much &ldquo;old school tie&rdquo;, the type who will drink to your health with Scotch or (these days) a single malt.

Ten try out at the Club

The Union of &ldquo;The Great Wines of Bordeaux&rdquo; was formed in 1973 &mdash; an association of 132 grands crus estates producing wines of the highest quality in the area around the town of Bordeaux, which is situated on the river Gironde, near the French coast.

Straight from the wine capital

Did you know that wine grapes produced in India are different from any other wine grapes in the world? Not better or worse, just different.

Grape harvest notes 

Producing wine is a joy and selling it a pain &mdash; ask any winemaker and wine company. To produce wine you&rsquo;ve got to have good grapes, good processing facilities and a good winemaker to help turn the fruit into something you would be proud to serve. Of course, most of all you&rsquo;ve got to have &ldquo;Vitamin M&rdquo;: loads of money, to pay for the setup and the grapes and the expertise.

It's a pain to sell wine

Some 6,500 people paid Rs 300 per head to visit the Bangalore International Wine Festival on March 2-4 at the Palace Grounds to sip wine at stalls of the 20 companies participating &mdash; and to do grape-stomping and face painting, groove to rock bands, go &ldquo;Ooh!&rdquo; at the fire displays, and generally chill out on the venue lawns with a nice bottle of wine.

Good time for wine

The pre-requisite for &lsquo;Wine Tourism&rsquo; is there should be wineries which have visitor facilities, and which are accessible from one of the metro cities: face it, that&rsquo;s where most present and potential wine consumers are still located.

Hot-spots for wine 

The past year saw few notable events in the Indian wine industry: no great fairs or tastings, no new state policies or rules that benefited any of the stakeholders, and certainly nothing that could be considered &ldquo;news&rdquo;. It was a singularly boring year.

The year gone by

Wine quality is a contentious and controversial subject as every wine maker tends to think that his (or her) wine is the best, and will rarely accept a dissenting voice on the matter.

Alok Chandra