Grape Education

Price or brand is often the criteria while selecting wines. “The whole romance and magic of drinking wine is lost when just selecting by brands,” says Sanjay Menon,a wine importer. Given that there isn’t a single permanent sommelier at any restaurant in this city,there aren’t many restaurant staffs that can educate customers. It is,therefore,not surprising when David Banford,Director of the Wine Society of India,says that his members “hesitate to purchase wine that costs over Rs 1,500 simply because most don’t feel knowledgeable enough to appreciate it”.

Since we don’t have a culture of wine consumption,formal education may be the only way to learn about wine. Ideally,it would mean the education of those who suggest what wines to purchase as well as that of consumers. In the recent years,many people have stepped in to provide both formal and informal courses on wine,but these are scant.

Menon saw opportunity in conducting wine education and set up the KBR School of Wine (info@kbrwineschool.com) in 2007. This was primarily aimed at the hospitality industry. Three years on,it still hasn’t received the response from the industry that Menon expected,but consumers have been far more appreciative. “The hospitality industry hasn’t really come forward to invest in training their staff. They feel that the staff they train will use the skills as leverage to move elsewhere,” he says. Accredited by the Wine and Spirits Education Trust,a British educational considered to be one of the leaders in its field,KBR is one of two such institutes that provides WSET certification.

The other,launched this month,is the Sonal Holland Wine Academy (sonalholland@gmail.com) that aims to have monthly courses. Her first class,on May 10,was conducted for 15 students and a basic course is for roughly six hours. Unlike KBR,Sonal Holland,who owns the academy,only allows students to take the course for certification. At Rs 10,000-12,000,it isn’t cheap. “I’m of the belief that the format set by WSET is designed to ultimately lead to a certificate. Discounting the value of the certificate is diluting the value of that knowledge,” she says.

A certificate is not the draw for all those who enroll for such courses. Kamakshi Sinha,a marketing professional,who took the basic course at KBR,says that she joined the course to “be able to make informed choices and enjoy wine more as a result. However,I would get the certificate only if I was interested in pursuing wine education further or I wanted to brag about it”.

For consumers like Sinha who simply want to learn the basics of wine in an informal setting,there are options such as We Know Vino (wkvclub@gmail.com),which conducts a basic course over four hours. Established in October 2009,the club holds courses at restaurants such as DelItalia or Salt Water Café usually twice a month. Shamita Singha,who conducts the courses,says,“I have studied WSET courses but I provide informal training based on my knowledge in a similar format.” She points out that these are crash courses aimed mainly at consumers who want to learn about wine.

For such wine lovers,another option is the Vitiquette program (vitiquette@goodearthwinery.com) conducted by a winery,Good Earth. The winery will set up a customised wine party at your home or any other location with a sommelier who will conduct the wine tasting.

For now,it is telling that KBR can conduct all four levels of WSET’s programmes,but Menon says that there aren’t enough level 2 certified students for him to conduct level 3 or 4 courses. However,it can’t be too long before educated customers force restaurants to stop lagging behind and invest in training their employees.