We are like that only
I
was jolted by a phone call yesterday from Mumbai by a guy whose father
makes wine at home. He was looking for some biological yeast and wanted
to know what we could offer him. He had got the phone number from a
magazine he had read an article on wine and the Delhi Wine Club.
Apparently, there had been a cross connection somewhere in the magazine which had featured a few articles and had erroneously quoted our club as a source for procuring home-made wine producing accessories. When I told him that the Delhi Wine Club was into promoting wines and creating wine culture through education, and not in production or sale of wine, he sounded upset. I did offer him writing to a couple of wine producers and get him the info, but, saying he could get it himself, he became rather livid.
'This means you are doing a half baked job. Don't you think you should encourage people to make wine in the house rather than helping the wine producers?' I didn't understand his logic, perhaps because that part of wine making does not interest me a lot. I told him there was so much to learn and teach about wine that perhaps it was not feasible for us to include this aspect of wine in our programmes. (I didn't have the heart to tell him that technically it was illegal to produce wine at home without a license).
He started shouting and accusing me of working for the wine lobby. After screaming some more, he hung up. It did occur to me that by promoting wine culture for the last 6 years through the club activities and publishing about them and other India-centric news items on India's first webzine, we had perhaps helped the Indian producers more than the importers. In no case, are we directly linked to any winery.
In any case, the club does not engage in any wine related trading. We are a consumer club of like minded people who like to learn informally about wine while enjoying it at events. We do not accept applicants who are in wine trading, though we have a couple of members who decided to import wines much after joining and it is a moot point whether they should continue membership. Many new applicants who are engaged in the wine trade promise us not to upset the club equilibrium if they were made members. But the rules are not relaxed by the screening committee which controls the admission.
The club takes pride in being neutral towards wine producing nations, our individual preferences notwithstanding. We encourage members and visitors to our website to drink wine from any country, drink fine wine and drink wine moderately. The wines could be winery-made or home made; we make no distinction. We realise that wines can be produced from fruits, other than grapes, but we focus only on the grape produced wines which offer endless opportunities of learning and enjoying.
We do not allow smoking during tasting and have turned down several offers of combining cigars with wines, or serving cognac, or other distilled wines, single malts, sake etc. and wine is the only beverage during our programmes. We follow an order of serving wines, which we normally do not run short of. Bottles are not allowed to be left on the tables and we do not like wastages. We realise that the amount consumed during a dinner can be harmful for health, but these evenings are exceptional in more ways than one.
We would like to see more and more Indians drinking wine, even if it benefits the wine producers or importers who are there to make a pretty penny anyway. But we do not engage in buying or selling wines, accessories or other related commercial activities. We also do not sell yeast or refractometers….
We are like that only.
Subhash Arora
January 8, 2008
