Contents

1INTRODUCTION 2 HISTORY 3 CLIMATE AND GEOGRAPHY 4WINE REGIONS 5 VITICULTURE AND WINE 6 INDIA GETS A TASTE FOR WINE

7 INTERNATIONAL WINE REGULATIONS: AN INTRODUCTION 8 A BRIEF HISTORY OF WINE LAWS 9 HOW WINE CAN BE ADULTERATED? 10 HOW THE ADDITIVES HAVE BEEN MISUSED IN THE PAST 11 ALCOHOL IN INDIAN CULTURE

Indian wine INTRODUCTION

Indian wine is wine made in India. Per capita consumption of wine in India is 9 milliliters.Viticulture in India has a long history dating back to the time of the Indus Valley civilization when grapevines were believed to have been introduced from Persia. Winemaking has existed throughout most of India's history but was particularly encouraged during the time of the Portuguese and British colonization of the subcontinent. The end of the 19th century saw the phylloxera louse take its toll on the Indian wine industry followed by religious and public opinion moving towards the prohibition of alcohol.

Following the country's independence from the British Empire, the Constitution of India declared that one of the government's aims was the total prohibition of alcohol . Several states went dryand the government encouraged vineyards to convert to table grape and raisin production. In the 1980s and 1990s, a revival in the Indian wine industry took place as international influences and the growing middle class increased started increasing demand for the beverage. By the turn of the 21st century, demand was increasing at a rate of 20-30% a year.

History
Viticulture was believed to have been introduced to India by Persian traders sometime in the 4th millennium BC. Historians believe that these early plantings were used mostly for table grapes or grape juice rather than the production of an alcoholic beverage. During the Vedic period of the 2nd and 1st millennia, the Aryan tribes of the region were known for their indulgence in intoxicating drink and it seems probable that wine was a current beverage. The religious text of the Vedas mentions at least one alcoholic drink that may have been wine related -sura which seems to have been a type of rice wine that was fermented with honey. The first known mention of grape-based wines was in the late 4th century BC writings of Chanakya who was the chief minister of Emperor Chandragupta Maurya. In his writings, Chanakya condemns the use of alcohol while chronicling the emperor and his court's frequent indulgence of a style of grape wine known as Madhu.

In the centuries that would follow, wine became the privileged drink of the Kshatriya or noble class while the lower caste typically drank alcohol made from wheat, barley and millet. Under the rule of the Muslim Mughal Empire, alcohol was prohibited in accordance to Islamic dietary laws. However there are written reports about at least one Mughal ruler, Jahangir, who was fond of brandy wine. In the 16th century, Portuguese colonists at Goa introduced port-style wine and the production of fortified wines soon spread to other regions. Under British rule during the Victorian era, viticulture and winemaking was strongly encouraged as a domestic source for the British colonists. Vineyards were planted extensively through the Baramati, Kashmir and Surat
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regions. In 1883 at the Calcutta International Exhibition, Indian wines were showcased to a favorable reception. The Indian wine industry was reaching a peak by the time the phylloxera epidemic made its way to country and devastated its vineyards.

It was a long road for the Indian wine industry to recover from the devastation at the end of the 19th century. Unfavorable religious and public opinion on alcohol developed and culminated in the 1950s when many of India's states prohibited alcohol. Vineyards were either uprooted or encouraged to convert to table grape and raisin production.
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Some areas, like Goa, continued to produce wine but the product was normally very sweet and highly alcoholic. The turning part of the modern Indian wine industry occurred in early 1980s with the founding of Chateau Indage in the state of Maharashtra. With the assistance of French winemakers, Chateau Indage began to import Vitis vinifera grape varieties like Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay, Pinot blanc, Pinot noir and Ugni blanc and started making still and sparkling wines. Other wineries soon followed as the emergence of India's growing middle class fueled the growth and development of the Indian wine industry.

Climate and geography

The major wine regions of India highlighted. To the north is Kashmir and Punjab. To the south (clockwise from top) is Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Goa.

While a large portion of the Indian subcontinent is not ideal for viticulture, the large diversity of climate and geology does cover some areas with suitable terroir for winemaking to thrive. The summer growing season in India tends to be very hot and prone to monsoons. Many of India's wine regions also fall within the tropical climate band. Vineyards are then planted at higher altitudes along slopes and hillsides to benefit from cooler air and some protection from wind. The altitude of India's vineyards typically range from around 660 ft (200 m) in Karnataka, 984 ft (300 m) in Maharashtra, 2,600 ft (800 m) along the slopes of the Sahyadri to 3,300 ft (1000 m) in Kashmir. Summertime temperature can get as hot as 113 F (45 C) and wintertime lows can fall to 46F (8C). During the peak growing season between June and August, rainfall averages 2560 inches (625-1,500 mm).
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Wine regions
Vineyards in India range from the more temperate climate of the northwestern state of Punjab down to the southern state of Tamil Nadu. Some of India's larger wine producing areas are located in Maharashtra, Karnataka near Bangalore and Andhra Pradesh near Hyderabad. Within the Maharashtra region, vineyards are found on the Deccan Plateau and around Baramati, Nashik, Pune, Sangli and Solapur. The high heat and humidity of the far eastern half of the country limits viticultural activity.

Viticulture and wine

The heat and humidity of India's wine region dictates many of the viticultural choices that are made in the vineyards. Vines are often trained on bamboo and wire in a pergola to increase canopy cover and to get the grapes off the ground where they would be more prone to fungal diseases. The canopy protects the grapes against sunburn and rows are spaced wide to help with aeration between the vines. Irrigation is essential in many of India's wine regions and since the 1980s, drip irrigation has been widely used. The tropical conditions often promote high yields which requires frequent pruning throughout the year. Harvest normally takes place in September and is usually done by hand. In the very warm wine regions of Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh, grapevines can produce a crop twice a year.

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India is home to several indigenous table grape varieties that can also be used in wine production with Anabeshahi, Arkavati and Arkashyam being the most common. Popular non-native grapes include the Bangalore Blue (Isabella) and Gulabi (Black Muscat). The Turkish grape Sultana is the most widely planted grape in India, cover more than half of the 148,000 acres (60,000 ha) planted in the country. In addition to the imported French varieties that Chateau Indage planted, Sauvignon blanc, Zinfandel, Chenin blanc and Clairette have started to establish a presence in the Indian wine industry.[2]

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India gets a taste for wine!

Indias wine consumption is rapidly increasing and is forecasted to grow at a compounded annual growth rate of 27 per cent from 2010-12. India has emerged as one of the fastest growing markets for wine consumption on the global map.

With a population base of over 1.1 billion, the consumption of wine is extremely low, indicating vast potential for future growth. Besides low consumption level, various other factors such as increasing disposable income, amplified wine marketing and influence of western cultures have given a new turn to the wine consumption pattern in India.

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The Indian Wine market is largely dominated by domestically produced wine and imports account for a less share in the total consumption. The sales of domestic wines will continue to dominate the Indian wine market over the forecast period, but high growth will also be seen in the consumption of imported wine. The consumption of imported wines will rise at a CAGR of around 33 per cent during 2010-2012, well above the industrys overall growth. The wine market in India today is still in its nascent stage. The industry is just over one million cases of wines manufactured in India and 0.15 to 0.2 million cases of imported wines. The value of the Indian wine
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market is around 2 per cent of the total alcohol beverage industry. A lot needs to be done in terms of education, awareness and demystifying wine as a product.

The scenario is changing rapidly: A large number of Indians have the right consumer profile to embrace wine as a lifestyle beverage. Once the privilege of the educated elite, today potential lies among the growing middle-class who enjoying increasing disposable income, tourism and women consumers.

The rise in consumption can also be attributed to factors including the perception of health benefits produced by wine, the fact that wine is
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lower in alcohol than spirits, in addition to the lifestyle image. India is switching from whiskey to wine and beer. Also big retail chains in certain states are now allowed to sell wines.

More and more people are drinking wine, every new restaurant that opens in the cites has a wine list, and awareness is growing fast. Women are drinking in much bigger numbers, and often their first choice beverage is wine. The movies reflect this change, with Bollywood actresses routinely seen drinking wine! The wine consumption is expected to grow at a rate of 30 per cent in the next 10 y ars. This growth is not only sustainable, but could even be conservative if duties were lowered. In the next ten years the wine consumption could reach more then 10 million cases. Cheers!

Presently most of the imported wine come from France, Italy, Australia, Chile, USA, South Africa and New Zealand. France has the biggest

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market share of approximately 40 per cent followed by Italy (15%) and Australia (12%).

Up to 80 per cent of wine is consumed in the major Indian cities: Mumbai (39%), Delhi (23%), Bengaluru (9%) and the foreign tourist dominated state of Goa (9%), the remaining 20 per cent are sold in the rest of India. The Red wine consumption is pegged at 45 per cent followed by white wine with 40per cent sparkling wine 13 per cent and Ros wine by two per cent.

International Wine Regulations: An Introduction

Wine laws are the set of rules which regulate various aspects of production and sales of wine. The purpose of wine laws includes combating wine fraud, by means of regulated protected designations of origin, labeling practices and classification of wine, as well as regulating
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allowed additives and procedures in winemaking and viticulture. Legislation affecting all kinds of alcohol beverages, such as the legal drinking age and licensing practices related to distribution, Taxation and sales, are usually not considered wine laws.

Wine is regulated by regional, state, and local laws. The laws and their relative rigidity differ for New World and Old World wines. Old World wines tend to have more stringent regulations than New World wines. Various wine laws, however, may include appellation-based regulations that cover boundaries as well as permitted grape varieties and winemaking practice-such as the French Appellation d'origine contrle (AOC), Italian Denominazione di origine controllata (DOC), Spanish Denominacin de Origen (DO) and Portuguese Denominao de Origem Controlada (DOC). In some New World wine regions, such as the United States and Australia, the wine laws of the appellation systems (American Viticultural Area (AVA) and Australian Geographical Indication (GIs)) only pertain to boundary specifics and guaranteeing

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that a certain percentage of grapes come from the area listed on the wine label.

A Brief History of Wine laws

The oldest known wine laws were created by the Roman emperor Domitian, who circa 92 AD issued an edict that banned the plantings of any new vineyards in Italy and ordered the uprooting of half of the vineyards in Roman provinces. The purpose of the edict was to improve the food supply of Roman cities by increasing the production of cereals. There is evidence to suggest that Domitian's edict was largely ignored in the Roman provinces. Domitian's edict, while probably not followed to any greater extent, stayed in effect for 188 years until Emperor Probus repealed the measure in 280 AD.

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In the Holy Roman Empire, the oldest wine law was created by the Reichstag 1498 to combat wine fraud.

In the wake of the Great French Wine Blight, which led to much wine fraud to supplement diminishing supply, wine laws were created in France to combat fraud. The French wine legislation later evolved to the AOC system, and inspired common European Union regulations. How Wine can be adulterated? Examples of ways in which wine could be adulterated are adding water, adding other (usually cheaper) substances such as spirits or other wine, adding substances to ?x faulty wines such as milk, mustard, ashes, nettles and lead (which prevents wine from becoming vinegary and makes it taste sweeter, but which is unfortunately poisonous). Alternatively the beverage could be called wine, but actually be made with fruits other than grapes (or even grapes that are not permitted grape varietals) to add ?avour or for cheaper production, or it could be made
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from raisins something that is often done in home winemaking. Today, laws are very speci?c about what wine is, and how it can be made. Since the use of additives is legislated, laws can be broken to produce a product which can be otherwise harmful for safe human consumption. How the additives have been misused in the past For the purposes of this discussion, misuse can be classi?ed into two major categories that which breaks laws and does not injure human health, and that which breaks laws and injures human health. The major example, in the last century, where people were seriously injured and died is the methanol-based Barbera. This wine was made from odds and ends of wine together with methanol in Italy in 1985, and resulted in the deaths of 20 people while others went blind. Surprisingly, this did not have a large impact on Italian sales but it did take a while for Barbera to recover its reputation (James 2004). More recently in 1999, during the BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy, popularly known as mad cow disease) crisis, one hundred thousand bottles of wine from the Rhone was seized on the grounds that they may have been ?ned with
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dried cows blood, a practice banned in the EU from 1997 onwards (The Times 1999). For people who are seriously allergic to sulphur dioxide, the 2002 Creston Bay Cabernet Sauvignon from Australia was potentially dangerous, and was withdrawn for sulphur dioxide levels up to 17 times the permitted level (Styles 2003).

In terms of misuse without serious health implications, there have been a number of examples since the turn of the century. In 2000, glycol was found in low-end Alsace wine leading to the wines withdrawal and not much else (Gebler 2000). This presumably was diethylene glycol, since ethylene glycol is toxic. In 2004, there were rumors of a cover-up of a scandal about additives in Bulgarian wine (Gebler 2004) and watered down Bulgarian wines were found on sale in 2003 (So?a News Agency 2003). The UK Wine Standards Board is currently investigating Spanish wines with added sucrose, alcohol and water (Gregory 2004). An investigation into very cheap wines in South Africa showed that some of these wines had added water as well as arti?cial sweeteners (NAMC 2002). In 2000, two unhappy employees accused an Australian winery
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of adding silver nitrate to their wines to improve aroma (Grape 2000). On further testing, it was found that some of the exported wines of Kingston Estate Wines contained silver nitrate, but at levels lower than the maximum allowed for drinking water (Truss 2000) so the addition although illegal was not harmful to human health. The winery was ?ned, its future production was tested for the additive and it was audited to ensure it complied with all wine laws. Additionally, the whole industry was to be checked for the use of this product (Truss 2000).

Probably the most well-known scandal is the Austrian anti-freeze scandal. In 1985, it was discovered that some Austrian wines contained diethylene glycol which gave the wines more body and made them taste sweeter (Robinson 1999). This revelation led to a drop in the demand for Austrian wine outside Austria, and a move to stricter wine laws (Robinson 1999). The additive which is used as anti-freeze does not harm people but is illegal (not to be confused with ethylene glycol which is also used as anti-freeze and is poisonous) so the health aspects were not serious. The addition was discovered after a red ?ag was raised by a
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tax of?cial who could not understand why a wine producer was claiming for VAT spent on diethylene glycol (James 2004). Some German wines were also found to have low concentrations of diethylene glycol indicating that they had been illegally blended with the adulterated Austrian wines, but this had a limited effect on the German market (Robinson 1999). Additionally, Japanese wines were also found to be contaminated with diethylene glycol from blending of Austrian wines, permitted by weaker laws on origin labeling (Seeman 1986).

The most relevant scandal from the point of view of South Africa is the recent ?avourant scandal. In an article published on 14 November 2003 in the South African daily newspaper, Business Day, Michael Fridjhon a well-known wine industry personality described the rumors circulating in the South African wine industry about the use of ?avourants in Sauvignon Blanc (Fridjhon 2003). Note that all these ?avourants can be legally used in alcoholic beverage coolers in SA. The Wine and Spirit Board responded on 18 November 2003 with a statement that they had been developing a detection method, and that it would be applied to the
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2004 harvest (Wine and Spirit Board 2003). In the one case, green peppers had been used and in the other case, synthetic ?avourants (Morris 2004). Although neither of the additives were harmful to human health, they were both illegal in terms of South African wine legislation. There is also misuse which could be viewed as bending the laws rather than breaking them. An example is the use of reverse osmosis in Europe which is permitted for must concentration but not for wine concentration. One famous Italian winemaker, has claimed that most reverse osmosis in the EU is done illegally because it is applied to remove water from the wine after fermentation as opposed to being used for must concentration before fermentation, which is legal (Beckett 2003).

In California, the addition of water is a big issue. Unlike the federal winemaking regulations which permit water addition for a variety of reasons, the state laws of California are much more restrictive, and only permit the minimum water required to facilitate a normal fermentation.
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Water can also be used to reduce alcohol levels to produce more elegant wines and addition for this reason is not permitted within the legislation, however it is difficult to distinguish between the two practices (Andrews 2005). It is claimed that this watering back is common and that much of the wine produced in California has had water added before or during fermentation (Andrews 2005).

Alcohol in Indian Culture

Wine is one of the highest taxed products in India as it is considered a luxury, not a necessity. The use of wine is discouraged by Indian Constitution. The central government normally declares the federal customs duties applicable to imports during the union budget held on the last week of February. Customs duties for most products have declined since the year 2000; however, taxation on alcohol has been an exception to this decline, and, as it is considered a negative product, the duty has actually increased to its current rate of 150% ad valorem.

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Constitution Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. Bhimaro Ambedkar, two leaders in the drafting of the Indian constitution, were teetotalers in their day, but believed that it was the responsibility of the states to regulate alcohol. Moreover, Article 47 of the Indian Constitution states that, The State shall regard the raising of the level of nutrition and the standard of living of its people and the improvement of public health as among its primary duties and, in 6 particular, the State shall endeavor to bring about prohibition of the consumption except for medicinal purpose of intoxicating drinks and of drugs which are injurious to health. Wine has traditionally been considered a type of liquor whereby the government morally obligates itself to protect Indian citizens from its misuse. Methods of alcohol control include: serving alcohol only at specific outlets or during specific hours; prohibiting alcohol in religious places, educational institutions and underage drinkers; and the official age of legal alcohol consumption being established at 25 years old. Most Indian states, however, have not prohibited alcohol and some (e.g.

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Maharashtra) even facilitate wine grape growing and wineries as an important sector of agriculture. Religion Over 800 million Indians, or about 80.5% of the country's population, are Hindu. The next-largest religious group is Islam, which makes up 13.4% of the population. Other religious groups include Christians (2.3%), Sikhs (1.9%), Buddhists (0.8%), Jains (0.4%), Zoroastrians(0.01%), Jews(0.0005%), Bah's and others whos

percentages are not significant enough to include.1

Hindu 80.5% Judiasm Jains 0.4% Zoroastrianism Sikh 1.9% Buddhist 0.8% Christian 2.3% Muslim 13.4%

The relationship between these religions and alcohol can be summarized as follows:
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Hinduism: Alcohol consumption is decided by the individual and how it fits in with their personal way of life. Islam: In Islam, intoxication by alcoholic beverages is generally forbidden, but Alcohol is allowed to be used for medical and other purposes, for example industrial use. Several Qur'anic verses and sayings of Muhammad prohibit the consumption of alcohol, and dealing with such a beverage. Christian: Christianity has historically had wine as a part of everyday life and also as substance in holy rites and rituals. Many Christians take a moderate approach to alcohol consumption and take care to avoid drunkenness as a form of sin, but delights in wine as a social staple. Some Christian sects have moved to complete abstinence from alcohol; however, the traditional view is most common among Christians worldwide. 7 Sikh: The Sikh Code of Conduct states, "A Sikh must not take hemp, opium, liquor, tobacco, or any intoxicant." At the time of initiation, a Sikh vows not to use any intoxicant. Drinking alcohol is forbidden for Sikhs.
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Buddhist: The Buddha was against any form of alcohol consumption, even in moderation, because of the effect it has on the mind. Mindfulness is central to Buddhist philosophy. This concept requires a constant awareness of changes occurring in the mind and body. Mindfulness enables the individual to react wisely to emotions and sensations when they arise. Alcohol distorts the mind and makes it impossible to practice this tenet. Jains: Intoxication is something to be avoided in Jainism because it relinquishes control over ones body. Many Jains do not consume alcohol. Zoroastrianism: Many Zoroastrians drink alcohol. They have no prohibition. Judaism: Alcohol is only prohibited during the Passover. Alcohol is moderately consumed by Jews.

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