Wine drinking is not new to India. One of the celestial beings that emerged from ‘Samudra Manthan’ or the churning of the ocean was the Goddess Sura – the goddess of wine. The rest as they say is history.

Acharya Panini (nothing to do with the Florentine hot grilled sandwich), the 5^th century BC grammarian, wrote of fine wine from Kapisa (now identified as Begram in Afghanistan). There have been archaeological discoveries of wine jars and drinking cups at this site. The varietal grown here was Kapiśayani Draksha.

Greeks exported wine to India – Ujjain was a great wine-drinking city. The Mughals had an obsession for good wine and supposedly made their own. Emperor Jahangir supported a vibrant wine culture. Shah Jahan’s daughter Jahan Ara, a lady of refined tastes, wrote good poetry and "…we are told, made her own wine!" She may well have been the first Woman Master Sommelier of India!

Louis Gaspard d'Estournel, also known as the Maharajah of Saint-Estèphe, exported his best wines, amongst other countries, to India in 17^th century. More recently, Singapore Airlines’ A380 inaugural flight on October 25th to Sydney served Chateau Cos d'Estournel 1982 to its First Class guests. (It retails at $660 a bottle!).

"Under British influence vineyards in Kashmir and at Baramati in Maharashtra had turned out wines good enough to draw compliments from visitors to the Great Calcutta Exhibition of 1884. The revival of Indian wine takes up where the British left off in the 1890s when phylloxera wiped out India's vineyards, just as it had in Europe."

Today is a different story. There are four major wine producing regions in India – Nashik and Sangli in Maharashtra, Bangalore in Karnataka, and Himachal Pradesh. The Nashik region is often referred to as the NAPA Valley of India.

The top three wine producers – Indage, Grover, and Sula – are family-owned businesses that started because of their founders’ sheer passion for wine. Vintage Wines - the promising new winery is also a family venture.

There are other notables waiting in the wings - Ranjit Dhuru (Chairman and CEO Aftek Infosys, and also passionate about wine) set up his 84-acre Cabernet Vineyards in the Dindori region of Nashik in 2000. He should be launching his first wines sometime soon. "I’m in no hurry. Let the market stabilize…As palates develop, people won’t drink anything so the industry will see a shakeout," says Dhuru.

Jerry Rao (CEO MphasiS BFL), with the help of Grover Vineyards, is planting grapes at his Nandi Hills farm in Bangalore.

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