By Sourish Bhattacharyya

www.sovereignwines.com

Our Judgment: The Sovereign Impex web site is in dire need of an update.

The web site of Naresh Uttamchandani's New Delhi-based wine import venture, Sovereign Impex, offers bit more than a half-hearted attempt like www.groverwines.com, but it isn't enough. Unlike the Sula or Sansula site, it doesn't offer the nuggets of wisdom that a wine aficionado would thirst for. And though it has very good links to the sites of Sovereign's principals, it doesn't tempt you to come back. It is also obvious that it has not kept pace with the steady growth of Sovereign's carefully selected list of offerings.

I was keen, for instance, to connect to Lungarotti ( Italy ) or Wildekrans ( South Africa ) or the German Reh Kendermann, but I failed even to get details of these wineries and the wine offerings, leave alone web links.

Among the active links on the site, I love to visit the Moletto site.

In my review of the Sula web site, I had mentioned that Indian sites needed to offer professional wine and food pairing advice. For inspiration, everyone in the wine business in India must visit Moletto's site and check out Anna Stival's recipes and wine pairing suggestions. The recipes are scrumptious and the wine suggestions are tempting.

Here's an imaginative way to popularise your wine offerings. If the industry is seriously serious about promoting the culture of having wine with food (as opposed to our present practice of having wine standing on our feet), it must invest in making food and wine pairing accessible.

The mystique surrounding this art must be removed forever. The electrifying excitement of having food with intelligently paired food must be shared if the industry is serious about promoting the sales of higher-value 'food wines'. The industry may find it meaningless, but I'm reminded of the apocryphal story of Procter & Gamble Chairman's exchange with the US economics guru Paul Samuelson. The P&G boss kept talking about how his firm was No. 1 in every product category and also had the highest advertising and marketing spend. After some time, Samuelson asked him if his company topped every category, why he needed to spend billions on A&M. The P&G boss replied, "Just imagine if the pilot of this plane were to shut the engines off. What would happen to us?" Moral of the story: To grow the product category, or just to keep up the momentum, you have keep being innovative about your marketing.

I subscribe to the www.thegoodwebguide.co.uk newsletter, which provides a great listing of visit-worthy wine web sites, among other things. A couple of days back, it alerted me to the existence of www.womenonwine.co.uk, which stands apart in the cyber clutter because of its Dinner Party Planner. The Planner allows web surfers to email their dinner party menus, including cheese offerings, so that they can get wine pairing suggestions from the three women who run the site. It's a great idea that is worth replicating in this country.