When a wine tastes like a ‘old sari box’

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Apart from sneaky sips from my parent’s wine glasses and surreptitious glugging of Christmas wine offered in church, my real tryst with wine began years ago at a swish wine bar in Mumbai. Millennials of a particular vintage will remember IVY, the very ahead-of-its-time chain of wine bars by Chateau Indage across the country in the noughties, which served Chateau Indage’s own brands and as well as imports from Australia and South Africa.

IVY afforded us newbs a chance to try wine without burning a hole in our pockets, with simple, easy-drinking wines that paired well with salted potato chips and Indian snacks. Sadly, IVY and Chateau Indage, the company that ran it, went belly up in 2010. And with it, that initial enthusiasm I had for wine faded as I struggled to find a wine community that didn’t seem so intimidating and elitist.

Later, when picking a career in F&B demanded a basic knowledge of wine, I found myself unable to connect with the complex tasting notes and jargon that seemed to dominate wine culture. Lately though, that seems to be changing. A number of wine experts are emerging across the country, armed with world-class degrees and a palate tuned to the flavours of home.

One of these evangelists is Tarini Kumar, the founder of Wine in a Million, a no-frills wine community started in Bengaluru in 2023. “We wanted to give people the chance to determine their own relationship with wine and create a safe space that welcomed not just wine enthusiasts but the wine curious," says Kumar. A certified wine aficionado who spent years in Bordeaux, France, learning about wine, Kumar says she knows what it’s like to be excluded from the conversation “just because one doesn’t know how to