[john.sw]

Seagram India has launched Seagram’s Nine Hills wine.

The Brand’s India launch was held on November 30 in Mumbai. Seagram India, a Pernod Ricard Group Company, the world’s second largest wine and spirits conglomerate, is the name that’s synonymous with world renowned wine brands such as Jacob’s Creek (Australia), Montana (New Zealand) & Mumms Champagne, and the finest spirit brands like Royal Salute, Chivas Regal, The Glenlivet & 100 Pipers.

Seagram’s Nine Hills offers 2 exquisite varietals each in the red and white wines, priced at the top end of the segment in all markets, between Rs. 450 and Rs. 550.  The range of Nine Hills wines include Shiraz, Cabernet Sauvignon, Chenin Blanc and Sauvignon Blanc

Seagram’s Nine Hills wine gets its name from the nine hills surrounding Nashik where the company’s winery and the vineyards are located. Only the finest quality grapes that come from the misty foothills of Nashik are used to create the magic of Nine Hills. Every drop of the wine is under the constant care of our French Master Winemaker, Jean-Manuel Jacquinot.  

The launch will be two phased; with Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka and West Bengal in phase 1 which will be completed by December 06.

Has anyone tried it, and how does it compare with Grover Vinyards and Sula?

[jyotirmoy]

The Grover product is inferior and some harvests of Sula is as good.

[YETI]

I'll keep an eye out for it in Goa in the next few weeks.

Indian wines are definitely getting better - it'd be nice if the Nashik Hills started to produce a drop to rival the Jacob's Creek's of the world.

[jyotirmoy]

Wine is a big thing in India now. More & more successful persons having money & passion both are taking up wine brewing. Some of them are engaging farmers to grow special wine grapes for them & some are buying land to start their own production of grapes. Most of them have traveled to famous wine growing regions of the world for training & have hired specialists as consultants. Wine industry has recorded the highest revenue growth in the last 2 years & expected to grow higher with each year.
Some wineries have opened eateries where local population comes for drinking wine along with delicious food. The grape crushing do's are drawing celeb crowds & is emerging as a fashionable holiday.

[dzibead]

I wonder if some areas in HP or UP in the Himalayan foothills might be good for producing Riesling-type wines.  The climate seems sort of close to the wine-producing areas of Germany, but maybe it's too wet and humid in the summer -- ??

[jyotirmoy]

Villages Ribba & Tibba in Kinnaur are the only grape growing places in the Himlayas. You are right dzibead both UP & most places of HP are too wet. The grapes grown in Ribba & Tibba are used to distill a kind of Brandy called Angoori. Angoor in Hindi means grape.
After the success story of Maharashtra Karnataka is now eying this lucrative crop.

[gautam]

I have written to Jyotida before in another forum, discussing this matter extensively. In my absolutely not humble opinion, some of the most magical wine terroirs are to be found in selected spots in the rain shadow areas of the Western Himalayas. Why:

1. The finest vinifera varietals [French, German, Alsatian, Austrian] are the ones that are situated at the limits of the wine-growing regions. This is a paradox we can evaluate when we compare the wines from cold-climate grapes grown in say, California and in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York as well as in Oregon. Warm days and cool nights allow a balance of acid and sugars that the warmer CA or subtropics can never achieve. Thus, we have the trend towards an international style of wines today, high alcohol, fruity, oaked, etc. ,CA Zinfandel, that people have grown to like. But top quality Rieslings, traminers, veltliners and others still lie with high frost climates.

In the Himalayas we can choose the altitude and the chilling.

Himalayas have the oolitic limestone characeristic of the finest French vineyards; they were seabottoms once. The soil excites me also for its very heavy mineral content, and shale deposits : excellent micronutrients, and aroma development.

Altitude and ultraviolet: PAL : that should be sufficient to a plant physiologist!!!! The aroma and flavor components, especially of red wines, arise from the phenylpropanoid pathway that takes off right from the shikimic acid pathway Where Phenylalanine Ammonia Lyase is a very important junction tha ti s stimulated by a host of stress factors: UV, herbivory, pathogen challenge, drought [remember a term here for later: Controlled Deficit Irrigation, i.e. drought induced as per need].

Now, the suite of genes responding to abiotic stress overlap with those responsive to pathogen challenge: i.e. the aroma and falvor components of wine have evolved to meet several functions, among them environmental stresses and fungal and bacterial invasion; pests, too.

So, choosing the altitude, aspect, slope and other micro-climate elements, you can achieve exceptional areas for grape growth. You will remember that favored vineyards like Chateuneuf du Pape and such are often only a few acres in extent. Well, such invaluable spots are found aplently in the Himalayas.

Rainshadow: low humidity, control leaf and fruit pathogens; high fruit solids; also use Controlled Deficit irrigation to control level of fruit  sugar/acid, AND fruit yield, without expensive thinning. Same way control leaf area ratio. Perfect.

With altitude, achieve superb vinification without expensive chilling of must and juice.

I have friends in Seagrams and other places, where I tell them that hey need to plant now so tha they have old vines, 10-20 years+ for truly great vintage, but people are not interested. only on the quick profit. You need to love the art. It is ridiculous, becaue, I myself have never drunk as much as 3 teaspoons of red wine in my life, and only that much of Gewurtztraminer once, to taste the phenylpropanoids!

But I sit in the middle of 1500 cold climate vinifera, labrusca, rupestris, and all manner of hybrids, and can grow you the finest vintage you can imagine, and teach others the principles of the same!

Edited by gautam, 25 October 2007 - 08:11 AM.

[crvlvr]

unless they price their wine around Rs200, I'll be sticking to my Rum. Why? Thats what we pay for a fine bottle of wine here in the US. It should actually cheaper in India due to the lower labor cost (and I think they get 2 crops a year, compared to 1 in the west,  due to the lack of freezing winters). Also, storage and transportation conditions in India are not controlled and their is no guarantee that the wines taste the way they are supposed to taste.

BTW, I just acquired  a wine cooler and I am blown away by how important drinking temperature is. A couple of degree too warm and it can taste too sweet/alcoholic and a couple of degrees too cold and it can taste dull.

[gautam]

A bottle of "good" US vinified wine from CA begins at minimum, $8, and $12 would be a more realistic sum for qualifying the adjective "good". Similarly, good Finger Lakes and oregon wines begin at the $12-15 level.

In the US, many pleasant and drinkable wines are to be had under $10: Chilean and South African for the most part. Your price of Rs.200 is closer to $5 without tax, and it would indeed be interesting to learn what wines are found at that price that can be classified as "good drinking wines." Boxed wines, certainly, and jug wines possibly.

* All prices are for 750 ml bottles.

I doubt you understand the mechanics of winemaking well: it would be much more in the  Indian plains because the initial ferment would require extremely expensive cooling outside and internally; controlling the temperature during the malolactic fermentation would again be very expensive. Indian vinifera grapes have very poor vinification characteristics, no matter what Malcolm might insist. They will continue to do so until night temperatures magically drop or grapes find a new pathway of dark respiration.

As I noted in another forum, the European Union is awash in wines of a quality far exceeding that produced by the best Indian vineyards. These wines have to be destroyed annually, transformed to alcohol for various reasons. When WTO trade protocols get straightened out,  if they ever do, the principle of comparative advantage will demonstrate that Indian wineries in the lower latitudes are a joke.  Only by specializing in the absolute best, again taking recourse to comparative advantage, can any Indian wine hope to make a mark in the world.

So today, Indian wine making is very expensive, mand Indian wine-related labor, owing to its poor productivity, relatively expensive, compared to its European counterpart.

[Somerset]

gautam, on Oct 25 2007, 02:35 AM, said:

In my absolutely not humble opinion, some of the most magical wine terroirs are to be found in selected spots in the rain shadow areas of the Western Himalayas.

Wow! Thanks for sharing this wealth of information on viniculture! From the little I know, appreciation of the importance of terroirs is increasing in the US; is this right? How developed is the concept in India? Sounds like a great thing to retire to: tending to vinyards in the cool dry rain shadow of the Himalayas.

[gautam]

Somerset,

As I mentioned, none is interested except in the fast buck. As you also may have noted, I wrote it takes 20-25 years for the vines to age sufficiently for the true vintages to appear; poor straggly plants, niggardly yield, great wines.

But despair not. The British planted and knew the Kulu Cox Orange Pippin to be without equal for all the reasons I have mentioned. We have aged Cox trees that are bad news generally, but for certain purposes can be very useful, if the market is sophisticated, and is developed.

Fruit liquers, especially rasperry and strawberry cordials, in a double walled Holstein still, superior Eau-de-vie, pear brandy, hard cider, ice cider walnut liquer [think Sloveniahere], there are numerous niche markets and high value agricultural niches to be tapped.

Just growing Mara de Bois type strawberries and one Japanese type cultivar,  Tochiotome, to cater to the specialized niche of Japanese expatriates, and Korean  cultivar to cater to korean expatriates, is highly profitable. Japanese and Korean  expats are highly specific about time of the year, type and presentation of their strawberry cultivars. It is quite simple to grow these, as they are day-neutral. What it takes is integrity and foresight and several somethings not quite common among the literate Indians but to be found among those not literate in English or not lettered at all but cultivated in values.

So yes, if you are serious about doing high -value agriculture in India, speak to me. The field is wide open. Blanched asparagus, for the upscale hotels. The clowns have not yet seen superb quality asparagus, blanched, similar in quality to the finest Spanish types. As soon as they do, all the wannabes will jump on the bandwagon, and asparagus chaat or some such unholy concoction will be the order of the day.

Many interesting things like this, and not just in the rain shadow but up in Mussoorie, so that you have rail transport to Delhi. And water for irrigation, from the sky. V. Important, and land where there is NO land mafia. Think through these things carefully. When you are serious, talk to me. And get a Dutch partner!

Edited by gautam, 26 October 2007 - 02:40 AM.

[Somerset]

gautam, on Oct 25 2007, 09:08 PM, said:

Many interesting things like this, and not just in the rain shadow but up in Mussoorie, so that you have rail transport to Delhi. And water for irrigation, from the sky. V. Important, and land where there is NO land mafia. Think through these things carefully. When you are serious, talk to me. And get a Dutch partner!

Gautam, thanks for the lengthy reply! I am not at all serious now, and likely won't be. But I can dream. I wonder if there will ever be a market for someone to evaluate terroirs in India...  

Why a Dutch partner?

[gautam]

A Dutch partner who is interested in agriculture/horticulture: because of the excellent training and long-established traditions and plant-science ethos in that country. Interest and capital investment also likely, from Dutch sources, because they will know what I am talking about, be able to evaluate. Also tech support from back home, networking, marketing, the whole 9 yards.

[crvlvr]

gautam, on Oct 25 2007, 12:57 PM, said:

A bottle of "good" US vinified wine from CA begins at minimum, $8, and $12 would be a more realistic sum for qualifying the adjective "good". Similarly, good Finger Lakes and oregon wines begin at the $12-15 level.

In the US, many pleasant and drinkable wines are to be had under $10: Chilean and South African for the most part. Your price of Rs.200 is closer to $5 without tax, and it would indeed be interesting to learn what wines are found at that price that can be classified as "good drinking wines." Boxed wines, certainly, and jug wines possibly.

...
So today, Indian wine making is very expensive, mand Indian wine-related labor, owing to its poor productivity, relatively expensive, compared to its European counterpart.

Gautam

Please stop being so judgemental. I never said "US wine". I said "wine in the US".  There is a difference. If foreign wine can be sold in the US for $5 (and I challenge you to a taste test between a $5 bottle and $20 bottle -- there is no difference.  Also, some US wineries sell the same $15 wine under a different brand name for $6) after transportation, retailer mar-up etc. I find it hard to believe that cost of production in India is really higher. Istead, the wine is priced to market. People are, IMHO foolishly, willing to pay more than their western counterparts beacuse drinking wine is the in thing to do.

So for now, I will consider most of the information in your post not fact, but your opinion.  Unless you can support your position with some sources/links (like I have below)

If you are (ever) in the US, I suggest you stop by a Trader Joe's to see how affordable wine really is. Here is info on one for the brands they carry available for $1.99 (Rs 80) http://en.wikipedia....arles_Shaw_wine

Quote

Charles Shaw wines are distributed exclusively by Trader Joe's grocery stores, and sell for $1.99 in California. Charles Shaw wines are affectionately known as Two Buck Chuck.

... at the 28th Annual International Eastern Wine Competition, Shaw's 2002 Shiraz received the double gold medal, besting the roughly 2,300 other wines in the competition.  More recently, Shaw's 2005 California chardonnay was judged Best Chardonnay from California at the 2007 California State Fair Commercial Wine Competition. The chardonnay received 98 points, a double gold, with accolades of Best of California and Best of Class

[gautam]

So much the better if the Shaw wines are excellent at $2. At the moment, owing to illness I cannot give the exact cost of vinification of Finger Lakes wine right at this moment, but when I do get to Geneva to the USDA-ARS center there, I certainly shall: the labor and other costs, of grape etc. are high here, and $4-5 would be the break- point for the white varietals and $3-4 for the vinifera hybrids. Ontario and Oregon have similar cost problems. You can certainly dismiss my post as opinion but I am involved in the physiology and pathology aspects since 1984, and intensively since 1990, and you cannot work with something on a regular basis and remain ignorant of the industry that is built on it.

If you read my post even more carefully, and my cheerful and frienfly claim to be able to grow/teach someone to grow a vintage crop, that is not either a boast or a lie, as some few here who know me better from other circumstances  will understand, and whose silent comprehensiion I value value greatly. So I understand a little bit of the end costs of getting the per Megagram costs of grape of x versus y versus z quality out to the vinification cellar, be it in CA, OR, NY or ONT, i.e. North America. So if the wine is selling at prices at or below that dictated by the FOB cost of  VINIFERA varietal grapes, many interesting things could be happening.

As I mentioned earlier, EU is awash in excellent quality wines. I am sad that at the time I did not keep the bibliographic reference to these trade refences, unlike my plant science issues that are indeed carefully referenced, so that you now can easily take a pot shot. But a simple investigation into EU wine figures will convince you, if you are so minded, that that indeed is the situation.

It could indeed supply the world with excellent table wines in boxed cartons with ETFE [ethylene tetra fluoroethylene, very tough, non-reactive, from which Teflon is made] wine containers within, an absolutely wonderful way to present wine to the small family. It then can be drawn off a glass at a time, for far longer than possible in a bottle, the collapsing storage vessels sqeezing out air.

This would drive down prices further, eliminating glass, cork and shipping weight. We here in the Finger Lakes woryy continually about price issues because from absolute zero, a tiny group of plant scientists with faith in this climate built  up this wine industry to be the second in the US after CA. Much derision, but it was done. So the second generation takes very great care to preserve and build upon the work of that first generation.

Massive new biotechnology facility coming up in Geneva devoted solely to the grape and oenology, to work lock step with a similar biotechnology facility in biology also being built at Cornell.

If you ever are in the Finger Lakes area, I invite you to visit us. You then will see exactly how much we rely on guesswork/ off-the-cuff opinions, and how much on  multidisciplinary teams of experienced oenologists, plant scientists, industrial chemists and others, all very, very focused on issues connected with the  grape  and its wine.

[crvlvr]

gautam, on Oct 26 2007, 03:36 PM, said:

So much the better if the Shaw wines are excellent at $2.

It could indeed supply the world with excellent table wines in boxed cartons with ETFE [ethylene tetra fluoroethylene, very tough, non-reactive, from which Teflon is made] wine containers within, an absolutely wonderful way to present wine to the small family. It then can be drawn off a glass at a time, for far longer than possible in a bottle, the collapsing storage vessels sqeezing out air.

This would drive down prices further, eliminating glass, cork and shipping weight. We here in the Finger Lakes woryy continually about price issues because from absolute zero, a tiny group of plant sc

Just wanted to clarify (from the wikipedia link) That the $2 Charles Shaw does come in glass bottle with a real cork, and not a cardboard box.

Quote

Bronco achieves its low prices in part by taking advantage of the overplanting of wine grapes in California in the 1990s, but also by growing huge quantities of its own at extremely low cost. The result is put in a respectable, 750mL package, sealed with real cork. People who might shy away from box wine, screwcap, and jug wine can drink equally inexpensive wine without the stigma attached to its usual packaging

The point is, if wine can be made here in the US and sold for $2 (Rs80) a bottle, it should be possible in India. I am not an expert in wine costing, but apart for the fixed costs, I suspect labor is the next biggest time.  India here should ahve an advantage over the US.

I think wines are expensive in the EU due to over regulation -- especially in France. Alsom given the type of "feel good" product that wine, certain amount of perception of quality is attached to its price. In other words, wines are percieved to be better if they cost more. Nonsense, I say.  Many wineries here spend more on the advertising than making the wine.  Ofcourse, their wine ends up costing more money. Hope you feel better soon.

Here is a link to an interview with a low cost producer:  Two Buck Chuck Takes a Bite Out of Napa

[gautam]

Thanks. I am not continuing an argument, but just for genral information, in end costs, EU wines get to be very cheap because of complex subsidies. US subsidies are more direct for certain crops, the BIG 5, corn soy, rice, cotton etc. Grapes do not get any, but in CA only indirectly through water and other financial instruments. Both counties have very large subsidies, though.

When you see  desert regionsof CA importing water from UT, CO, other very arid regions, and growing not just rice but Zizania or wild rice, enormously thirsty, and mango, there is something grossly cock-eyed with the thermodynamics here. Import water with energy. Grow lettuce thatis waer colored green. Transport it all over the nation with costly fuel. Tell the Europeans, we don't subsidize horiculture, but you do!! No wonder people freak out at us at the WTO.

Now, you may be interested to learn of the many wrinkles that comprise the agricultural markets and labels, and the US is a wonderland in this respect. Note in my earlier posts I was very careful to note a certain phrase "varietal vinifera": now good, acceptable and all sorts of wine can be made from all manner of grapes grown in CA, NOT necessarily vinifera, AND, this is VERY important from the economic point of view, from the sudden flushes caused by the excess from the raisin industry, e.g when there is rain on the drying raisin grapes in the field. So, the Thompson Seedless can be vinified perfectly well and blended with a number of other wines to create a decent drinking table wine.

Since Europe is the home of vinifera, they have a natural advantage where any EU wine naturally becomes a Varietal vinifera! Whereas in CA and in the US, that ain't necessarily so! Decent wines, even excellent ones can be made with non-vinifera grapes! Just like excellent beer can be made with  [and IS made with] a mixture of grains in addition to barley [that is most of your US beer, rice, maize, etc. etc. !!!!!!!]. Which is why Coors and Bud is cheaper than Saranac or micro-breweries! Changing the mixture of other grains relative to barley in the mix.

What a rat's nest of pricing, agricultural commodities is, in the US. Everywhere in the world as well. Please don't even get me started on sugar and sugar subsidies. If you are a US citizen, you will scream when you see how your money is being transferred to a handful of very wealthy individual by sugar subsidies. And here I can give you citations point by point, from the USDA's own economists, from the NY Times, from a host of sources. And this goes back to the bulk wine industry, where certain percentages may be used to enhance fermentation under certain conditions etc. Better than the EU, which was putting polyethylene glycol [antifreeze] in lower end wines, to enhance sweetness, in certain instances!!

I work/ed continuously with the range of chemicals, tannins etc., involved with many aspects of wine maturation, grape skins, casks, whisky lactones, so forth, and in reference to the quotation you appended, many hundreds in the industry including myself strongly believe that it is high time that right from a young age people need to be weaned away from the idea of cork, just as our forefathers were weaned away from the idea of leather/clay bottles and introduced to glass.

Cork is a natural product, with its own set of chemicals and imponderables. When we have non-reactive plastics like the PTFE family, there is no reason to cork. I would never let a wine $20+ ever touch a cork; what a potential for waste! Screw tops with plastic caps, what is wrong with that? Other than, as you said, misplaced snobbishness.That same attitude causes needless packaging in glass, high weight, high transport costs, higher prices. Pack in Tefzel pouches, as suggested before, at least for table quality wine.

Was so encouraged to see Australian Olive oil packers selling brands in those collapsible pouches: that, indeed, is the way to go.

The biggest tragedy is that first rate EU wine, truly first rate, is being destroyed every year, denatured into industrial alcohol so as not to collapse the world market. So either the EU withdraws its subsidies, and the wine industry all over the world equilibrates itself according to its comparative advantages, or EU releases wine as a nutritional supplement, packaged by Hoechst in Hostaflon, and the starving of the globe die happy. End to alleged " terrrorism" wherever): flood the place with free sweet wines, courtesy NATO [just joking!!!!]

[john.sw]

I don't know what the tax rate is on wines in Tamil Nadu and Kerala, but this must be huge!

Wines are so much cheaper in Goa and somewhat cheaper in Karnataka; not because they have lower profit margins, but because of lower tax.

In TN and Kerala the wine also has a health warning  - it says that wine is injurious to health (although red wine in moderation is known to be good for the health) because alcohol abuse is obviously a problem.

All licensed premises in TN have to display a sign that reads, "Alcohol destroys health, family and nation".

There is also a law in Kerala that limits the amount of alcohol in the home.  I believe that it is a maximum of six bottles of beer and two bottles of wine/spirits per adult family member!

[crvlvr]

I don't know the details of the tax structure on domestically produced wine/alcohol in India, but the duty on imported stuff is pretty steep:

http://www.eubusines.../1183647619.36/

[crvlvr]

Gautam,

My question  still remains -- if US wine producers who get no subsidies and can produce wine (with decentpackaging) at $1.99 bottle, why can't Indian producers do that same?

http://www.azcentral...e...html?