During my visit to VinExpo in Bordeaux and several vineyards in France and Italy this summer, wine producers invariably asked me about the future of wines in India. My first response always was that it was bleak, unless..
I was not thinking of the high import duties, irrational excise laws which were not only inconsistent throughout the country but were an impediment to wine availability in spite of free imports. I was optimistic that the duties would come down as the government would soon realize that wine is not the same as hard liquor and should be preferable for better health. The new policy of duty-free import for the hotels would also result in a price drop. I was also not even concerned about the religious and political sentiments.
The major factor uppermost in my mind was the storage of wines and the continuing lack of education and understanding of its importance in India where temperatures vary from 5°-45° C. For wine to stay in the dormant state or mature properly it is extremely important to store the bottles horizontally to keep the cork slightly wet, in a dark area free of vibrations and any negative odours and at a constant temperature of 14°-16° C. While it is relatively easy to maintain the other variables, keeping a constant temperature is neither easy, nor followed properly.
Wine is only a transient product from vine to vine(gar). Vine gives you grapes that become wine on fermentation. Warm temperature and oxygen are the biggest enemies of wine, turning it into vinegar. Wine develops pleasant characteristics like taste, bouquet, after-taste and complexity, depending upon the quality and variety of grapes and the wine making techniques used. Final maturation occurs in the bottle. The perfect temperature that enables the process is 15° C. In the Old World, wines are stored in underground cellars at 13°-16° . When the temperatures are higher, I have seen them use air-conditioning to control the temperature .
Before we open a bottle, it has been stored in the producer's cellar, ship, docks, distributor's warehouse, retailer and finally our home. Proper storage at each step is essential. I visited a winery in Orvieto a few years ago. Tasting from a bottle of Classico costing less than two Euros was surprisingly full of fruit and bouquet. When I expressed my interest in importing it, the producer asked me if I would arrange a reefer ship to maintain freshness. That is how they export globally. In India, it may lie in the heat of the docks for days , awaiting customs formalities. Cost of shipping and storage at a cool temperature are expensive for the importer and may not be economically viable.
Storing in a shady corner of the house with a mistaken notion that longer the wine is stored, better it gets, makes it turn into vinegar or at least off-tasting. No wonder that one in four or five bottles I taste are not drinkable. When this wine is served, one tastes bad or off-tasting wine thinking this is how wine tastes. It is so off-putting that one becomes averse to wine and it loses out to liquor.
For more people to enjoy wine, it is critical that wine is imported under controlled temperature conditions, handled properly on the docks , warehoused properly and most importantly, stored in a proper wine cellar or an old refrigerator at the warmest temperature setting and with no other foods inside-they can impart their odour to it. Old machines that do not cool effectively may be an acceptable economical substitute though not completely proper.
Unless we store our wines, even ordinary wines are not enjoyable. You can forget about enjoying better wines and buying fine wines would be putting money down the drain. Under such existing circumstances, I doubt if people will switch over to wine... unless ... Subhash Arora |
