A cellar for the parlour

LAUNCHES

With wine cellars finally available in the market, you have no more excuses for serving bad wine.

The Oberoi has a spectacular one, so do a handful of chic stand-alone restaurants like Delhi's Diva. As wine gets popular"" and demystified"" locating the perfect bottle of that merlot is not the only preoccupation for Indian enthusiasts. Instead, how to store the bottle perfectly has become equally important.

Smart restaurants are, of course, showcasing fancy "cellars" these days. But, now, that dank, underground space usually associated with Continental chateaux, if you like, is running into other territory.

Domestic wine cellars of the more modern kind "" actually, refrigerator spin-offs "" are popular in Europe and America and traditional wine markets. Now, they are available in India too.

The Haier group has launched a select range. Two models are currently available; with 20 and 30 bottle capacities and digitally-controlled temperature. Each cellar has three different "zones" in the 4 degree C - 18 degree C range, allowing you to store reds, whites (and any other wine, a delicate sparkling, for instance, which cannot withstand extreme conditions) separately.

An opened bottle can last up to 10-12 days here. The models are available for Rs 17,990 and Rs 21,990 respectively and this is the first time that such "cellars" are available in the Indian market.

"Wine, as a business, is the fastest growing of all alcoholic beverages. You need infrastructure to support the category and our research found that the market was ready to accept our cellars," says Ashok Tiwari, vice-president, marketing, home appliances, Haier.

Tiwari adds, the market research pointed to the 20- and 30-bottle cellars as those in most demand, instead of the more expensive, higher-capacity storage contraptions. On the other hand, the company also has a Rs 11,000 cellar which uses a mechanical system of temperature control but has not introduced this in keeping with its research findings.

While Haier's products are available in showrooms in Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore, among other places, Dometic, a leader in hotel "mini bars", is also watching the market carefully.

The company is only present in the country through a representative office and offers products using its trademark "no-vibration" cooling technology, pitching these as ideal for storing wine since the bottles must not be disturbed. The models available, however, are much bigger"" and expensive.

Are Indian customers lapping it up? Haier claims to have sold 50 cellars in about 10 days and connoisseurs, on their part, seem happy enough with the introduction of the products, especially since knowledge about storing wine correctly is still low in the nascent market. After all, murky tales of even big traders using "vizi-coolers" (!) to store bottles are common in the wine circles.

On the other hand, there are alternatives to the domestic "refs". Diva-owner and wine-aficionado Ritu Dalmia says: "If I wanted to have a cellar in my house, I would take 50-60 sq feet, get clay put on the walls, air-condition the place, and be able to store 500 bottles there" "" at under Rs 1 lakh but lots of passion.