Balti Wines, a Manchester based company has come out with five different wines to go with the spicy Indian food served in UK restaurants. It worked with Food & Technology Department at Manchester Metropolitan University to develop a unique Chilli factor to rate its wines.

One in four people in Britain eats a curry at least once a week. Half a million eat curried food every day! Curry is a UK phenomenon enjoyed at every level. Couple this with the British’s growing love of wine and you can understand why the owner, Ashraf Sharif's business idea has been a hit in Indian cuisine restaurants in London, Birmingham and other big cities in UK.

I noticed Balti Wines when I read a news report that Balti was planning to sponsor the Indo British cricket matches played last two months in UK. What a brilliant idea, I thought! With the phenomenal Indian viewer ship it would be quite an economical way of advertising on TV and getting around the advertising laws in India banning such ads! Why did it not occur to Indage, Sula and other progressive Indian producers?

On checking their website, reading about them and through emails, I found out that the company has walked the extra mile to match their wines with the spicy Indian foods. The Range of five blended wines- 3 whites & 2 reds, is the product of extensive tasting in conjunction with representatives from the Food Technology Department at Manchester University and working with restaurant owners and customers.

"It's no gimmick," claims Sharif, 53, headquartered in Manchester. ‘It took four years of extensive research in collaboration with Manchester University's food science department, and samples from around the globe, before we all were happy with the grape selections, “ he adds.

"At first, Indian wines seemed the obvious answer, but we found people didn't like them because they're not used to them," he says, explaining that the wines they eventually chose come from Argentina. The New World, he explains, tends to make wines that have an upfront fruity style that complements the spice in the food.

A marketing idea that helped him pair his portfolio of wines with different cuisines was the classification of wines with different chilli ratings from 1-3. Thus a wine with a rating of 3 would be able to handle the extremely hot chilli dish while the one chilli wine would be recommended for a softer and milder preparation.

For instance, the dry white wine with Sauvignon- Chardonnay blend has been given a Chilli 1 rating and is designated for mild cuisines whereas the Ugni Blanc- Chardonnay is fuller bodied wine that has got 3 Chilli ratings designated to go with the hottest of foods.
Bonarda- Malbec blend is the red wine for mild foods whereas the Syrah Merlot has a rating of 2 and is designated for medium to spicy food.

In the very early stages we approached Jeffery Archer from the Food & Technology Department at Manchester Metropolitan University. Comments Jeffrey, ‘ The approach we took was to do taste panels, and try a wide range of wines against a wide range of curries to find out what sort of wine would suit the different kinds of curry. Intuitively we thought that a rather large, strong, red wine would go well with hot foods, but we discovered that you really needed some sweetness to cut through the flavours, and that's what has been blended in.’

Apart from the restaurants Balti Wine has already secured a lucrative contract to supply wine to P&O cruises, and the company has started producing mini-bottles for airlines. "Our biggest company is Compass Trading and they supply 17 airports and nine docks around the country."

The wines are reasonably priced at around £5 in UK, the price point which most wine drinkers look at for daily drinking. Sharif is working at selling them to the supermarkets for retail at less than £6.

For the lovers of fiery- hot curry there is a choice of wines with a three-chilli rating. An injection of fresh capital from investors has enabled the company to open an office in the US, with a view to cracking the lucrative North American market. "Although Indian food is behind the UK in terms of popularity, it is growing astronomically," says Sharif. In fact Balti Wine is already stocked and sold in 13 US states.

With hundreds of thousands of people looking for a wine with proper food-wine match, can India be far behind for Bucketfuls of Balti Wines?

Subhash Arora