The US wine market serves as an interesting guide to how the Indian wine market may evolve in years to come. Both are new world markets without a historical affinity for wines. Until the 1960s and 1970s wine making in the US was a small, marginalized affair largely thanks to the shadow of prohibition in the early 1920s.

Today a lot has changed and US wines stand as equals to the stalwarts of the old world wines. Wine consumption now exceeds hard liquor drinking across the country. In light of this, Decanter magazine's recent findings that foreign wines particularly European and New Zealand wines are doing better was surprising. According to Decanter, European table wines showed strong growth at 9.4% even though the average price increased by 5.5% to $7.14 in 2005. It is left to be seen how foreign wines will do in India over the long term.