A Rant and a W(h)ine on Booze -(1/2)

Published: 29th May 2025

Category: Consumer Behaviour

This , unlike others, needs a preamble.

A friend of mine loves wine and spends a lot of time and money on it. He loves France, French cuisine and Wines. On the other hand, I don't drink wine, never liked it, never bought it. My experience remains limited to toasts at Christian weddings where its a part of the celebrations.

On a visit to his home, my friend brought out a bottle of particularly expensive wine and shared it with us. He explained in painstaking detail as to how it is to be consumed with the right food pairings along various “notes of spices and berries ” in that wine. While everyone around me nodded in agreement with him, I found myself searching the bottom of the glass to see where the spices and berries were.

FOMO followed and on my way back I thought as to why I did not know more? I also noticed something else. Every liquor store in India is called a “wine” shop - a detail I had never paid any attention to. So I decided to drink wine at every occasion possible thereafter, including ordering at restaurants or parties just to get the hang of it.

3 months and Rs 12,000 later, I feel compelled to write about my experience with wine consumption over a glass of Jack and Coke!

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In India, a “wine shop” rarely sells wine. (This paradox should be your first hint that something is amiss with wine as a beverage.) Despite accounting for a tiny fraction of India’s alcohol consumption, wine is the brand ambassador for every liquor shop.

Wine is the least loved beverage in India with the most beloved name. A bottle of wine is saved for gifting, birthdays, anniversaries or posing at elite parties to be put on Instagram

So Why “wine shop”?

• Legacy / Colonial hangover (Permits issued in the name of Wine and spirits),
• Polite euphemism (read drinking is a taboo topic),
• Sheer inertia.


Wine remained a “gora saheb (white man) ka drink” found mostly in elite parties / celebrations and particularly christian festivals. But enough of terminology - lets look at the product itself. Wine is simply fermented grape juice. Yes, its production requires craftsmanship, soil matters and so does weather- but at its core its just fermented grape juice.

But in a social context, wine isn’t just a drink. It’s a performance art, a status symbol, and at times, a seduction tactic wrapped in overpriced glassware.

Wine doesn't make you sophisticated – pretending to like it does.

All the charm in wines lie in what you order, how you order, food pairings, understanding and appreciating subtleties ( regardless of whether they exist). Taste rarely matters.

You can’t just drink it. You should be able to pronounce it right, let it breathe, sniff it, hold the glass like it's an audition, swirl it before drinking it and describe it in the language of failed poets after consuming it.

Its the iphone of alchohol: overpriced, overhyped and mysteriously essential to seem successful. Wine’s real genius isn’t flavor. It’s gatekeeping - the jargon, the etiquette, the geography. Like Art or Club memberships or premium credit cards, it's designed to exclude the uninitiated. Meanwhile a pint of beer remains that --beer

Few tools of seduction are as hilariously overused yet strangely effective as an overpriced bottle of wine in a dimly lit, wood-panelled restaurant—where even the cheapest glass of wine costs more than a week’s worth of groceries. For some men, the wine list isn’t a menu—it’s a mating call. Armed with dubious knowledge about “tannin leathers” and “oak-forward notes,” they perform their courtship rituals with the same fervour as religious rites of passage.

The performance begins with a dramatic swirl of the glass, a theatrical sniff, and obscure vocabulary like “Elegant red cherry with a hint of tart raspberry” In an atmosphere so elitist that regular water feels inadequate, this kind of performance—paired with an Amex Platinum to boot—ensures that the woman across the table “tastes” all the right notes (read: gravy train, money to burn, and generational wealth).

Afterall who needs charm when there is Chardonnay?

Its a classic example of decay meeting delusion and people happily paying through the roof for both.

Wine’s power lies in its packaging—not the bottle, but the backstory.

More on that in part 2 of this article. (Hold on till I get a refill !)