I had started the evening tasting with Moet & Chandon to celebrate the inauguration of the new Bangalore facilities of National Instruments, a billion dollar Texas based IT company. The nine wines selected for tasting were Azure Bay, Kendall Jackson and Fontanelle Banfi Chardonnays, Beaujolais Villages from Louis Jadot, Sula Satori Merlot, Kendall Jackson Pinot Noir, Oxford Landing Cab-Shiraz and as the grand finale, Gaja Promis, all purchased locally from Metro Cash & Carry.

A pretty decent selection that, for an august gathering that varied from novices to not- so- novices who were there to enjoy the tasting experience. One hoped that after the end of the evening there would be a few converts to the wine religion. At the very least, they would feel more confident in the company of wine drinkers and relish wine better in future.

The guests were enjoying the unidentifiable aromas, the incessant fizz of the tiny bubbles and the fresh, crisp flavour of the champagne. While we were still at the rudimentary stage of wine tasting discussion, the efficient waiters from the Taj catering had opened the next wine in line, Azure Bay Chardonnay, getting a hint from the corner of my eye. While the interaction on the beauty of champagne was on, I saw some people already engaging their palates with the chard, ‘ahead of the class’.

Looking at the dark golden colour of the wine from a distance, my instinct warned me something was amiss. When the glass was brought to me, the aroma was …yuk, so off-putting, almost putrid. The colour was unappetising and so was the flavour which was not that of acetic acid but certainly not of apples or peaches it promises on the label. The wine was flat, dull and simply off. It was a case (two bottles, actually) of bad storage or simply the wine dying out on us because of old age.

The question is: who should bear the cost of these two bottles of wine in the purgatory state waiting to attain the only possible state of nirvana- poor quality vinegar. After the purchase, the bottles had been stored properly in the client’s fridge under my instructions from Italy from where I had been invited to attend this important event in Bangalore only with a few hours’ layover in Delhi. Clearly, the customer cannot be blamed for the wine being bad.

Is Metro at fault? Or the distributor? Or the importer, or should one blame the producer? The producer could be faulted for churning out this cheap quality wine, of course, but that fact is known to the importer and he prices it accordingly. He might even have negotiated an umbrella rebate for wine to be defective or corked, a universal occurrence of 2-5%.

There is no doubt in my mind that the customer should be given an immediate replacement or refund immediately. The matter can be sorted out between various other links of the chain. In any consumer product, the law protects the customer from a defective product and the retailer is the agent who is accountable to him for any defects. For defective products one can also approach the producer directly. This may not be practical for imported wines, anyway.

IT laws have been formulated only recently in India, IT being a new phenomenon. In wines too, this area of satisfactory quality is still nebulous and will need to be handled with care and prudence.

With so many wines in the market, of past vintages that have become ‘defective’ by losing out their original characteristics, the issue will gain more significance as retail sale opens up. I was checking out a popular retail store in South Delhi recently when a customer walked in with a bottle that had exactly the same problem as the Azure Bay and the store manager was tizzy trying to ward off the complainant and creating a lot of unpleasantness. Such situations are bound to increase.

It would be a tricky situation to handle too, obviously because who is to tell whether the wine is off or not - certainly not the man behind the counter, whose knowledge is limited to the colour and perhaps the race of the wine. In this instance, all other wines served were purchased from the same vendor and were ok. In fact, like on other occasions, the guests polished off the last, Gaja Promis as I was giving them the background of the wine. I did not even get time to tell them that the Super Tuscan was a blend of Merlot, Syrah and a minor portion of Sangiovese but the bottles were polished off with every red wine lover rating it the best.

What nags me always is also the fact that a person drinking out an off wine may also be turned off completely forever by wine, a white wine, a Chardonnay, or Azure Bay. Despite it being a low end wine, its brand name can be sullied, for no fault of the winery. Since the off wine does not physically harm the system, the taster may perceive this to be the normal taste, with no excitement that we find in the beverage.

Fortunately the next two labels of Chardonnay we served saved the day for the varietal and possibly the wine, as the next two were quite quaffable, especially the Banfi from Tuscany. Same was true for the reds- they were all in good physical shape.

Coming back to the basic question, the common business sense would also dictate that the front end retailer take the bottle back immediately and give it back to the importer. The history of the customer would guide him if the complaint is genuine or not.

One hopes that there will not be many cases coming up in the consumer courts in future. With retail opening up in a big way, this problem is likely to be accentuated unless the cool chain is maintained and the importers and distributors clear out the stocks of young wines before they die out. To this extent, a possible law insisting on ‘Best before…’ on the label would be a good idea. Incidentally, hotels may be accused of fleecing the customers with their high prices but are generally amenable to appeasing the customer in such cases as they have trained service oriented personnel.

If we do not handle the case of the bad wine bottle, we risk the growth in wine consumption even at the current rate.

Subhash Arora
June 15, 2007