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Grape expectations for fledgling India wine industry

Wicker baskets balanced on their heads, barefoot women in colourful sarees work to bring in this year's harvest of fine French grapes ahead of the monsoon.

In a nearby field winemaker Michel Roland picks a bunch of golden yellow clairette grapes, samples several, and pronounces that section of the vast estate ready for picking.

"Ripening is the first condition to make good wine," says the ruddy-faced Frenchman. "It is relatively easy to make good wine if you have good grapes."

That partly explains why Roland, a consultant to vintners operating 140 properties around the world, is present. Geography explains the rest.

May is not harvest season anywhere else in the 12 countries -- the United States, South Africa plus countries in Europe and South America -- where Roland advises clients.

That made it possible for the wine guru from Bordeaux to fit into his schedule an offer to influence the craft in one of the world's least known production areas -- India.

Since 1995, Roland has been an advisor to Grover's Vineyards, located 50 km north of Bangalore, a once tranquil hill town popular with vacationers and retirees because of its moderate climate and lovely civic gardens.

Grover's is India's only vineyard devoted to producing wine exclusively from French varietal grapes, and in the process trying to alter the drinking habits of a nation that inherited a preference for beer and whisky from its British colonisers.

In explaining why Indians never developed a widespread taste for wine, producers here cite the law of supply and demand: there has been no supply of good wine, thus no demand.

That is changing.

The steady growth of an Indian middle-class, especially in cities like Bangalore, the nation's high-tech centre, has sparked demand among Indians who frequently travel abroad for Western luxury items like wine.

India also recently lifted quantitative restrictions on alcoholic beverage imports, opening its domestic market to foreign producers of wines and spirits.

Is Grover's Vineyards up to competing with wines imported from Europe, Australia and elsewhere?

An incident last November convinced Roland that it is.

Roland said he conducted a blind tasting that month for a good friend -- a writer at the Wine Spectator, a magazine read by wine snobs everywhere.

The drop Roland poured was a glass of Grover's Vineyard's 1998 La Reserve, a full-bodied blended red.

"When I asked him where he thought it came from, he said, 'Maybe Bordeaux?' Afterward he guessed everywhere -- Spain, Portugal -- but never India of course."

Getting started

Grover's Vineyards is the creation of Kanwal Grover, an Indian trader, who in 1979 met George Vesselle, former director for technical research at French champagne producer G H Mumm & Co.

Over the next few years Grover shipped samples of soil from all over India to France for analysis, and studied weather data for the previous 50 years.

Bangalore was eventually chosen because of its well-drained soil, cool nights and temperate climate. In summer it rarely gets hotter than 35 degrees Celsius, and on the coldest winter night never cooler than 10 degrees.

"We don't have extreme differences, yet substantial variation during the day," explains Estate Manager Abhay Kewadkar, who studied wine making in France and Australia.

Daily temperature variation is important to provide a growth period during the day, followed by a rest period at night.

In 1983, cuttings from more than 35 varieties of vines were planted to see which fared best. In 1989 the number was narrowed to nine varieties, planted on three acres. And in 1992, Grover's Vineyards sold its first bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon.

Today the vines cover 120 acres, a figure increasing by 20 acres each year towards a target of 200 acres. That is much larger than most European vineyards and similar in scale to mid-sized producers in the United States and Australia.

Last year Grover's produced 300,000 bottles of wine, composed of five varieties.

It makes a Cabernet Sauvignon, a Blanc de Blanc from the clairette grape, two varieties of rose, and the luscious La Reserve.

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