Posted: Tuesday, 15 March 2011 10:33

Bangalore International Wine Festival a Success

For a few euphoric hours it might have become a cricket and wine festival but the wine tastings continued uninterrupted with twelve wine companies participating with various degrees of quality. Some were unfortunately not really worthy being called ‘wine’, but there were certainly some very pleasant surprises in the shape of two new wine companies from northern Karnataka- Rico wines from Bijapur and Yaana Wines from Bidar.

Both were presenting their first vintage, with the Cabernet Shiraz showing up remarkably well. The Rico Cab-Shiraz in particular had nice, clean fruit, good tannins and no false notes, and the Yaana was a slightly different, lighter style with less tannins and good acidity. The quality is certainly improving overall from year to year in particular the reds and the rosé. This was illustrated by the comments made by the ex-pat visitors, most of whom left the show laden with bottles, wine glasses and French cheese.

Stands were busy throughout the three days, April 11-13. Newcomers to the show, Sula and Kingfisher Bohemia had rather underestimated the amount of wine sold for tasting, but as last year they were authorised to replenish the stocks every day thanks to the cooperation of the excise department, which must be praised and hopefully will set the example for other states.

Kawaljeet Singh of Big Banyan, Raj Hosali of Nine Hills and the Aspri team were again very pleased with the show’s success. “We had a very good turnout at the wine festival and it was very comforting to see a lot of new and uninitiated palates not only being curious but also very actively seeking suggestions from our team,” says Kawaljeet, adding ‘we had a lot of our regular patrons visiting us along with visitors from the trade. Consumer demographics represented every echelon and age group.’Samar Singh Sheikhawat, Marketing Head of UB  seemed quite pleased too. he says, 'The BIWF was a very good platform wine advocacy and we are extremely happy with the response that our Kingfisher Bohemia South African wines received.  We hope that this serves to trigger such wine fairs in other parts  of the country as well.”

This was still very much a fun event again, with techno music and live bands, where the more regular wine drinkers tasted alongside total novices. Not only were the young being convinced of the benefits of drinking wine versus liquor, but some very conditioned whisky fans from other generations were equally succumbing to ‘conversion’.

For those curious to learn more about wine, a variety of short but very informative wine seminars were held on all three days on an open-house basis with a good number of very attentive listeners. The speakers, including the well-known Indian wine expert Alok Chandra, were all specialists in their own particular fields.

Topics included wine and health, wine tourism, general winemaking knowledge and a very informative slide presentation by a young, local winegrower, Keshav Raju, an ex-techie from the US on his experience in starting up a vineyard north of Bangalore, leading up to the first harvests. Interestingly he is going the same way as the most forward winegrowers in the world – experimenting with organic and biodynamic vine cultivation. 

A new feature this time was a wine and food pairing seminar held by Bangalore’s own celebrity Chef Abhijit Saha, who runs two of Bangalore’s top restaurants, Caperberry and Fava. Five samplers of his dishes were paired with five wines, kindly donated by Sula. The experience was a first for all participants and the pairing was absolutely spot on – ‘worked like magic’ as one lady put it.

The Festival was overall a huge success thanks to the young team of organisers, Cosmic Meltdown Crew, run by Kavya and Mahaneet. For only the second edition of such an ambitious venture, in a country where anything involving alcohol can turn out to be a nightmare, their professionalism turned this into a world-class wine event.

Maureen Kerleau

Maureen Kerleau has been part of the wine world for over 25 years, mainly involved with sales and marketing of French wines to various export markets. In 2005, she approached the Indian wine market and travelled extensively around India,In 2008, her husband was appointed to lead a venture in India for an Aerospace company and she spent two years in Bangalore, devoting her time to promoting first French, then Indian wines. She advised the organisors of the first Bangalore wine festival which has lead to even more involvement for this year's edition.

Tags: Bangalore, Rico, Yaana, Bidar, Bijapur, Big banyan, Sula, Kingfisher Bohemia, Caperberry, Fava, Abhijit Saha, Cosmic meltdown, Maureen Kerleau, Keshav Raju, Nine Hills, Alok Chandra