What is it about wine that prompts wine aficionados to band together to form wine clubs?
Perhaps there’s safety in numbers — having fallen into a fairly esoteric space, one wants the company of like-minded souls to share the journey into wine. More likely, numbers give club members better leverage with wine producers or importers to part with some or all the wines consumed (or sampled) free of cost.
Wine clubs are set up in various ways. The oldest — the Wine Society of India (Delhi) — has a very focused membership base, with a few dedicated souls (who rarely change from year to year) doing the actual running of the club. One rarely hears of them these days, so it’s likely that its members are there at all prominent wine events but do not advertise their presence.
The Bangalore Wine Club was formed in early 2002 by a group of friends (including yours truly) and has grown to 150 members. There are annual elections (2009 sees an all-women committee — surely a first for a wine club worldwide) and six to eight events every year, and successive committees have continued to “raise the bar” regarding events.
The Delhi Wine Club was also formed in 2002, and is orchestrated by Subhash Arora (recently a recipient of the Order of the Star of Italian Solidarity) and has organised some 138-odd events to date! No elections here, and the events are organised by the Indian Wine Academy (also run by Subhash Arora).
An offshoot is the Wine Club @ Gurgaon, formed last year by (among others) my friend Ranjan Pal — evidently the denizens of this glitzy haven of shopping malls and high-rise offices found it better to organise their own events, spurred, no doubt, by the substantially lower prices for wines in Gurgaon.
Also formed last year was the Rotary Wine Fellowship of India — initiated in Bangalore by Rotarian Devesh Agarwal, in true Rotary spirit this organisation also raises funds for charitable causes. And let’s not forget the Food Lovers Club of Bangalore, which has been organising wine appreciation courses for the past year.
There are also wine clubs in Mumbai, Hyderabad and Pune, and quite recently Terroir, the wine club of Chennai, got off to a high-profile start. Members’ clubs these, providing a forum for wine-lovers to gather and improve their understanding of the heavenly liquid.
The Wine Society of India, on the other hand, is quite a different kettle of fish: organised professionally (David Banford is in charge and the famous wine expert, Steven Spurrier, the mentor), it charges no entrance or membership fees and only offers members the chance to buy three to 12 bottles of wine once a quarter. WSI is backed by prominent wine importers like Sonarys and United Spirits, has branches in Mumbai, Bangalore and Delhi and, with a total membership already approaching 1,000, it seems set to overtake all other wine clubs in terms of size and reach.
Despite the meltdown in wine consumption in India following the recession and higher prices, it looks that wine clubs are here to stay — and given that there are at least 1 million regular wine drinkers in India, there’s scope for many more clubs.
Slainte and Cin Cin!
