Why can't the 200 million people of the middle class drink wine?
"We established a wine bar between Pune and Nasik and it's surprising to see a guy in a dhoti-kurta drinking wine next to a merchant banker in a suit! It just goes to show that if you make wine available at the right place and at the right price, even the guy in the dhoti wants to drink it," says Vikrant Chougule who belongs to the Chateau Indage family in a DNA article. We certainly hope that everyone in India starts drinking wine!
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Comments
Wine is an inexpensive and delightful beverage. It engages all the senses: sight, smell, taste, the feel in the mouth. And if you proffer many toasts, it engages the sense of sound as well! From my limited knowledge of wines and my more limited exposure to Indian culture, I think Indians would enjoy wines. Wine encourages conviviality, which I felt in abundance while I was there.
The standards for judging wine are also almost ayurvedic. Good wine should balance all of its attributes and the finer attributes should win out over the baser ones, as in a good Bollywood movie.
Finally, it's not all that expensive to enjoy a decent bottle of wine. There are many wines that pair well with the regional cuisines of India.
If the individual acquisition of taste for wine parallels a culture's acquisition, you may want to begin with sweeter white or fruit wines before you venture into some of the "dryer", more robust reds.
I encourage my brothers in India to engage your senses (and your sense of adventure) and enjoy a glass of wine this evening.