Wine – The boom in the Indian economy hasn’t bypassed the sale of liquor, especially wine. What is more pleasing though, for a wine producing country like South Africa, is that Indians are changing their traditional drinking patterns. Young adults use to migrate from consuming hard liquor to wine in their thirties, but are now doing so from a much earlier age. As a result, the sale of wine has nearly doubled in most regions in 2010. Even more pleasing to wine producers is the fact that it has become popular culture to attend wine tastings and to drink wine in restaurants. This will usually have a long term benefit.

Wine distributors have been quick to catch on. They are now importing wines from South Africa, Chile, Russia and Italy. They sponsor activities around wine such as wines samplers, menus paired with wines and even piccolos (small pints or half bottles). Restaurants are finding that an increasing number of their clients order expensive foreign wines. Demand covers the full spectrum of wines, from sparkling wines to desert wines.

Corporates and hotels host regular wine tastings to get their clients and employees to taste good wines. They sponsor employees to attend wine courses to learn how to appreciate wine when interacting with business clients.

A few wine facts about India • It has become the 10th largest growth country for wine (Vinexpo study, 2010) • Wine consumption has grown from 4m litres in 2008 to 14m litres in 2010. South African wine producers can take note of the growth of wine consumption in India and cultivate a new market for the very good wines they are known to produce.

(Article in Hindustan Times, Edited by LiquorWise)