Somapaanam

An article in India Currents about the changing attitudes to Indian wines. Deepthi Illa, quoted in this article, is a friend of mine.

http://www.indiacurrents.com/articles/2011/07/01/soma-rising

From the article:
Over the last two decades in the SF Bay Area, I’ve run into several Indian American Silicon Valley moguls who have given my pedestrian self the impression that to really, really have arrived in life you must, besides traveling first-class,  know your dry from your sweet and your varietal from your bouquet. They made it clear that the route to becoming a wine snob might not lie by warehouse stores and in gallon jars. Indians, they swore, have never been wine connoisseurs.

While the Hindu scriptures of the Vedic age refer to “Soma,” an intoxicating drink offered by Brahmin priests, winemaking and wine appreciation have never been organic to the Indian way of life, at least in recent history. Muslim conquests and colonial rule blurred the way the Indian subcontinent perceived alcohol. The British Raj pegged down generations of Indians to the sway of whiskey and scotch.

These drinking traditions take time to supplant. “The second and third generation of Indian Americans may have begun to appreciate wine but the first generation is still into Johnny Walker Blue Label and Chivas Regal,” says Raghu Sawkar, owner of Sonoma’s Sawkar Family Vineyards.