Why young Indians don't drink enough wine

Back in the year 2000, India surprised the world by opening up the imports of food and wine - I still remember the official jargon: these products were "decanalised" - and I was one of three journalists who were taken by the French government on a junket to the historic regions that have defined that country's wine heritage.

The French were first off the mark, but the rest of the wine-producing world wasn't far behind. With Japan, the old Asian wine-consuming power, hobbled by economic turmoil, India, together with China, was the shining white hope of the new millennium.

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A decade-and-a-half has passed since those heady days, yet, despite the growth of a fairly robust domestic wine production sector, proliferation of wine clubs, decent wine stores and qualified wine sommeliers, India, unlike China, refuses to warm up to the drink. Even today statisticians talk about a per capita consumption of 6ml (a little more than a teaspoon) of wine - it was three million or so at the turn of millennium.

Vinexpo stats, the most widely quoted by the industry internationally, pegs India's wine consumption at a little more than 1.7 million cases in 2015.

Compare this with China's present level of consumption - 174 million cases - and you'll know where India stands. I remember the year when I first went to France, export managers would be laughing at the propensity of the Chinese to mix robust red wines with Coca-Cola and serve the concoction with ice. Today, those export managers have merrily abandoned India and are hosting lavish wine dinner across China and Hong Kong.

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They have been replaced by the high priests of vodka and unsurprisingly so - the imported premium vodka market has touched nine million cases. The story is not any different in categories such as whisky, brandy and rum, especially because young India, across states and demographic categories, are warmly embracing everything but wine, which seems ironic at a time when young hospitality professionals are busy studying in their spare time to become qualified sommeliers. Why is it so? I have three theories to explain why young India hasn't warmed up to wine.

Theory #1: Indians, even if they have studied abroad, are not culturally inclined to have wine with food, which is a fundamental part of the wine culture. Our idea of drinking alcohol is to be done with it before sitting down for dinner.

Theory #2: Young India views wine as a fuddy-duddy drink, maybe because it associates it with its parents. Historically, each new generation turns away from the drinks parents favoured.

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Well, if you check out the age profile of the champions of wine across the world, and the average age of wine club members, you'll know what I mean. For a nation as young as India, wine has to be showcased in Bollywood style, not like some solid state physics PhD thesis.

Theory #3: Our hotels and restaurants are killing whatever little market that may be existing for wine by pricing even supermarket plonks beyond the credit card limits of young India (and I suspect even of the parents). Not argument seems to melt their heart as they laugh their way to the bank.

(Courtesy of Mail Today.)