Grapes of Bangalore

Print Story - canada.com network


The grapes of Bangalore
The New India: Shamed by India's once abysmal wine offerings, Grover Vineyards sets out to make it right

Financial Post

May 7, 2005

In the Nandi Hills north of Bangalore, the roots of a new Indian industry are taking hold. In a country known more for call centres and curries, entrepreneurs such as Kapil Grover have teamed up with the French to sow the seeds of a burgeoning wine region. In the process, they are recreating the success of other emerging wine-producing countries such as Argentina, Chile and even Canada. National Post reporter Jason Kirby travelled to India to sample Grover Vineyards' shiraz first-hand.

- - -

Kapil Grover is a man with a plan to tap a lucrative Indian market. He's got a great product and lots of ready customers. But for three years, he's been beating his head against a brick wall of bureaucracy.

No, he's not a Canadian businessman struggling through India's infamous red tape. He's the owner of a Bangalore vineyard that is one of the top producers in this country's emerging wine industry. And he wants to sell his roses and Cabernets at Indian restaurants throughout Ontario.

One problem: Mr. Grover can't get past the province's liquor mandarins. His agents in North America have applied several times for the Liquor Control Board of Ontario to import wines from Grover Vineyards--to no avail. "It's quite odd in a free country like Canada to have something like the LCBO," says Mr. Grover, sitting in the wood-paneled dining room of the exclusive Widdington Sports Club in Mumbai. "Maybe here in India, but not Canada."

The LCBO is something of an oddity in the world--most developed countries let producers import wine directly. Not in Ontario, where the LCBO is the official arbiter of taste. And the board has deemed the quality of Grover Vineyards' wines unworthy for the province's consumers. That has left Mr. Grover flummoxed. Wine drinkers in the United Kindgom, the United States, Russia and even picky France can't get enough of the Indian vineyard's wine. Legendary French winemaker Michel Roland, one of the world's top oenologists, has guided Grover's development and owns a stake in the firm. So does France's prestigious Veuve Clicquot champagne house.

You have to admit that the idea of consuming wine from India is eyebrow-raising, to say the least. Curries, yes. Even Kingfisher beer. But wine? Over the past 15 years, however, a small group of entrepreneurs have sewn the seeds of a burgeoning wine industry here by enlisting some of the top names in winemaking. Grover Vineyards, which has slowly nurtured its operations near Bangalore, is now the second-largest producer in India.

This year, Grover will press enough grapes -- their vines transplanted from France -- to produce 620,000 bottles of wine. Of those, 150,000 will be exported, to the United Kingdom, the United States, Russia and even picky France. In fact, two-thirds of Grover's exports will end up on tables in Paris, the self-declared wine capital of the world. Legendary French winemaker Michel Rolland, one of the world's top oenologists, has guided Grover's development and owns a stake in the firm. So does France's prestigious Veuve Clicquot champagne house.

But try as he might, Mr. Grover can't get past Ontario's liquor mandarins. His agents in North America have applied several times for the Liquor Control Board of Ontario to import wines from Grover Vineyards -- to no avail. "It's quite odd in a free country like Canada to have something like the LCBO," says Mr. Grover, sitting in the wood-panelled dining room of the exclusive Widdington Sports Club in Mumbai. "Maybe here in India, but not Canada."

If Ontario weren't such a huge market, he'd be tempted to give up. His agents have just started investigating the markets in Alberta and British Columbia. But the LCBO is the largest purchaser of alcohol in the world. It's also something of an oddity -- most developed countries let producers import wine directly. Not in Ontario, where the LCBO is the official arbiter of taste.

And the board has deemed the quality of Grover Vineyards' wines unworthy for the province's consumers. That means Ontario wine drinkers won't be sipping Mr. Grover's Cabernet Shiraz or Blanc de Blanc any time soon.

It was partly a sense of shame that led to the creation of Grover Vineyards. In the 1940s, Mr. Grover's father, Kanwal, started a machine-tool company that eventually imported equipment for India's aerospace sector. Most of the company's partners were based in France, and officials often went back and forth between the two countries. Over the years, the elder Grover grew embarrassed that there was no decent domestic wine to serve his discerning French guests. "When I joined the company in 1981," says Kapil Grover, "we would have almost three lunches a week with engineers, marketing people and technicians. But there would be no good wine available. Dad said he wanted India to have the best technology available, but he didn't want this country to be a punishment station, where companies say 'Who would want to go to India?' "

In 1980, Kanwal Grover read an article about Georges Vesselle -- known as the "pope of champagne" -- who was helping the Chinese develop a domestic wine industry. Kanwal sent him a letter. Mr. Vesselle agreed to meet and, over a 1935 bottle of Bouzy Rouge, the two shared their passion for fine wine. The French winemaker agreed to help, but he warned the elder Grover that creating a respectable vineyard would be a long and arduous process.

He was right. Mr. Vesselle started by poring over 50 years of India's weather data. He toured 21 potential sites over three weeks and debated with Mr. Grover about possible locations, with just the right amount of rain and sunshine for growing perfect grapes. Mr. Grover's pick, Hyderabad, in the mid-south, was deemed too dry by the wine expert. Mr. Vesselle's pick, the disputed Kashmir region on the Pakistan border, was considered too volatile by the Indian entrepreneur. Mr. Vesselle ended up planting tiny test crops of more than 30 grape varieties around the country. Each summer for eight years, his wine students would haul a one-kilo press to India from France and crush grapes in their hotel room. The bottles were flown back to Mr. Vesselle's lab for testing.

In the end, Messrs. Vesselle and Grover settled on Dodballapur, 40 kilometres north of Bangalore. It's a dry and hilly area, warm by day and slightly cool by night, with a temperate climate year-round. They planted nine varieties of grapes in 1989 and officially launched Grover Vineyards four years later.

But Mr. Vesselle was getting too old to keep jetting around India. So the Grovers enlisted the help of Mr. Rolland, sometimes known as "the flying winemaker" for his reputation for cultivating wineries around the globe. In lieu of his traditional consulting fee, the wine master -- who advises more than 1,000 chateaux in France and many other vineyards worldwide -- agreed to take a small stake in Grover Vineyards. The addition of "Mr. Michel Rolland, Bordeaux, France" on each label has added heft to the upstart winery's reputation. Mr. Rolland has compared his experiences working at Grover to those of "a mountain climber who has scaled an impossible peak."

It hasn't done much to excite the domestic Indian market, however. For most Indians, the choice of drink remains beer and whiskey. Little wonder. A decade ago, the only widely available wine was mostly rancid stuff made from table grapes. "The Indian market is booming, but it's small -- just three million bottles a year," says Mr. Grover. "I'm talking about good-quality wine, not the crap you get everywhere." Aside from Grover Vineyards, two other Indian vintners dominate the high-end market -- Chateau Indage and Sula Vineyards.

By some estimates, Indians consume just half a teaspoon of wine per person each year. (By comparison, Canadians, drink about 12.8 litres a year; the French have everyone beat, at 55 litres.) Still, even if a fraction of India's billion people get turned on to a good domestic shiraz, the market could be huge. And with India's rapidly growing middle class increasingly demanding the finer things of Western life, the domestic wine market is growing at about 15% a year.

But Mr. Grover sees more potential overseas for his five wines -- a Cabernet Shiraz, two varieties of rose, a Blanc de Blanc from the clairette grape and La Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon. Rather than tackling the wine market in general, he has targeted patrons at Indian restaurants. "In London, for instance, we have a great advantage because of the popularity of Indian food," he says. "People eating there order either Kingfisher or Cobra beers with their meals because they think they're Indian. But those drinks aren't even made in India." So why not pair a true Indian wine with your chicken tikka masala?

Grover Vineyards hopes to produce 800,000 bottles next year, with 30% marked for export. By 2008, Mr. Grover wants to cork one million bottles and send 400,000 to Indian restaurants around the world. Ontario will have to wait.

This is not the first time Mr. Grover has had trouble cracking a foreign market. When he first started exporting wine to the U.K., European Union rules initially forbade the vineyard from using the name Cabernet on bottles. It took a year to get British officials to recognize and approve the site where Mr. Grover grows his grapes.

Ontario has been another thing altogether. Mr. Grover says his U.S. distributor first approached the LCBO three or four years ago about shipping wine to the province. Since then, North American importers working on behalf of the Indian winemaker have applied at least three times for access to Canada's largest alcohol market. The latest rejection came in February, says Mr. Grover.

When first contacted about Grover's case, LCBO spokesman Chris Layton said the agency had no record of being approached by the vineyard. That was news to Ashok Dhir, an importer based in Oakville, Ont., who is one of the hundreds of registered agents authorized to deal with the liquor board. Roughly six months ago, he contacted Mr. Grover about bringing his wine to Canada. Mr. Dhir figures he has put in roughly 200 hours negotiating with LCBO officials and visiting some of the roughly 300 Indian restaurants across Ontario to gauge their appetite.

"I think there's plenty of demand at restaurants here for Grover wine," says Mr. Dhir. "I've said this to the LCBO, but they say the quality isn't good and there isn't enough demand." But so far, he says, 37 restaurants have ordered 10 cases (or 120 bottles) of Grover wines. "In other countries, you can import directly by yourself," says Mr. Dhir. "But here you've got to go through the LCBO."

One LCBO official in charge of screening incoming alcohol did little to hide his distaste for Grover Vineyards' products. In his feedback last February, David Cacciottola, product manager of European wines, variously described three of the Indian wines as "unclean," "prematurely aged," with "barnyard" and "mouldy aromas."

That stands in stark contrast to published reviews of Grover wines. Janis Robinson, editor of the Oxford Companion to Wine, has said Grover's wines are "very competently made and as they'll grow older, they'll acquire more layers of flavour." A reviewer for The Wall Street Journal has described Grover's Cabernet Sauvignon as "exceedingly aromatic and fruity ... with a remarkably persistent finish." A couple years ago, Wine Enthusiast magazine credited the Grovers with "creating a little corner of France in South India."

Mr. Layton of the LCBO says Grover may be going about things all wrong. Rather than apply through the board's retail arm, he says the Indian winery's agents should apply through one of the LCBO's other departments -- the private ordering division, perhaps. "We're like any retailer in that we run the risk of having products on the shelf that don't sell," he says. "The ultimate person bearing the burden of inefficiency is the taxpayer."

Mr. Dhir doesn't buy it. He says the private ordering program isn't worth his effort, since the LCBO's monopoly allows it to jack up prices as much as four times the retail price in India. A $5 bottle of wine, for example, then becomes a $20 bottle of wine. Mr. Dhir argues that after adding the costs for delivering the wine to individual restaurants across the province, the final price would be prohibitively high.

The whole episode is puzzling to Santosh Awatramani, a Los Angeles-based importer who acts as Grover Vineyards' agent in North America. "I've come to realize that, with the LCBO, it's not what you know, it's who you know." Mr. Awatramani says he left India 17 years ago to get away from that kind of system. "There has to be a solution," he says. "Restaurants want Grover's wine. The only thing standing in the way is the LCBO."

While his North American representatives duke it out with LCBO bureaucrats, Mr. Grover is ploughing ahead with his expansion strategy. The vineyard will only use 80 of the 300 acres at its plantation near Bangalore. Increasing the crop is one of Mr. Grover's top priorities. Meanwhile, his wines are only available in eight U.S. states, leaving much room for growth.

But it looks as if it will be some time before diners in Ontario can judge for themselves whether Grover wines go well with their lamb biryani. "If I can send 100,000 bottles to France, it must be good," says Mr. Grover. "Russia has just started buying. The U.K. is buying. The U.S. is buying. I don't understand why Ontario wouldn't want us in there."
© National Post 2005




Copyright © 2005 CanWest Interactive, a division of CanWest Global Communications Corp. All rights reserved.
Optimized for browser versions 4.0 and higher.