Wine in India: A Short History
Wine in India is both very old and very new. Grapes have been grown on the subcontinent for a long time, but a wine industry in the modern sense, with dedicated wineries, named labels and a domestic market, is only about four decades old. This note sets out that history briefly, with its sources listed at the end, and marks the points where the evidence is thin.
How the grape reached India
Accounts compiled from ICAR-NRC Grapes, WSET India and Csizmadia-Honigh’s The Wines of India record that grapes reached India from Persia and Afghanistan around 500 BC, and again around the twelfth century. For most of the time since, the grape in India was something to eat fresh or to dry.
That habit still shapes the numbers. According to ICAR-NRC Grapes data, India’s grape area grew from about 52,000 hectares in 2002-03 to roughly 139,000 hectares by 2018-19. A current source gives the use of the crop as about 77 per cent table grapes, about 20 per cent raisins, about 2 per cent juice and about 1 per cent wine. In other words, wine is a very small corner of an enormous grape economy.
The 1980s: a first modern winery
The modern industry is usually dated to the early 1980s. Chateau Indage, at Narayangaon in Pune district, was founded in 1982 by Shyamrao Chowgule after two years of research with Champagne Technologies of France, and is described as India’s first modern winery. Its sparkling wine, Omar Khayyam, was exported from 1986. At its peak the company is reported to have held between 60 and 75 per cent of the Indian wine market.
Chateau Indage is also a warning. Overexpansion and the 2008 financial crisis broke it, and the Bombay High Court ordered it wound up in 2010. Any current source that lists it among India’s leading producers is quoting data more than a decade out of date.
1999: Nashik and the Sula story
The turning point in most accounts is 1999. Rajeev Samant, who had studied at Stanford and worked at Oracle in California, saw his family’s land at Nashik in 1996 and built Sula Vineyards there with the California winemaker Kerry Damskey. The company is named for his mother, Sulabha. It released what are described as India’s first Sauvignon Blanc and Chenin Blanc in 2000 and its first Zinfandel in 2003, and it pioneered wine tourism. Nashik, in Maharashtra, became the centre of the industry, a story told in more detail in India’s wine regions.
Policy followed the pioneers. Maharashtra’s 2001 wine policy is recorded as the driver of a winery boom in the state. The boom ended abruptly in 2007 and 2008, when the financial crisis bankrupted several producers, Chateau Indage among them.
Consolidation, 2019 to 2026
The industry that emerged from the boom was smaller and more concentrated. Roughly 95 wineries operate nationally, about 45 to 52 of them in Nashik district, but the independent field is narrower than that count suggests. Sula’s own portfolio grew by acquisition: York Winery merged into it, ND Wines followed in April 2024, and a definitive agreement to acquire Chandon India’s Dindori estate and winery was signed on 25 March 2026. Fratelli Wines, based at Akluj in Solapur district, was acquired by Tinna Trade and renamed Fratelli Vineyards Ltd.
Sula listed on the BSE and NSE on 22 December 2022 and is described as India’s largest producer. For the year to March 2025 it reported record revenue of about Rs 618.8 crore, with wine tourism a growing part of it. Market-share estimates vary by source and year, but industry sources suggest that Sula holds somewhere between 50 and 65 per cent of the grape-wine category, with Fratelli second.
A boutique wave and the view from abroad
Alongside the large producers, a smaller group of boutique wineries grew up in Nashik. Vallonné Vineyards, at Kavnai, was founded in 2009 by Shailendra Pai, a wine professional of three decades, and positions itself as India’s first boutique winery. Reveilo, founded in 2004 by Yatin and Kirana Patil with a first release in 2009, is described as the first Indian winery to partner with Italy for technology and equipment, and the first to bring Italian varieties such as Sangiovese, Nero d’Avola and Grillo to India as rootstock.
Exports are a modest part of the picture, roughly 10 to 15 per cent of Indian output according to one marketing consultancy, with the UAE, the Netherlands and Hong Kong taking about 49 per cent of that. In 2021 a specialist agency, Wines in India, launched in the United Kingdom, founded by Sonal Holland MW, India’s first Master of Wine, with a portfolio of six Indian producers. Waitrose listed the Vallonné Anokhee Grand Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon, described as the first and only Indian wine listed by the chain. The agency’s stated obstacle is trade and consumer misconception rather than availability.
A small market with a long way to grow
Wine consumption in India remains tiny. Per-capita consumption is about 9 millilitres a year on the figure quoted in the Wikipedia article on Indian wine, and other sources give somewhat different numbers, all of them very low. About 38 million litres were consumed in 2022, growing at roughly 8 per cent a year over 2017 to 2022, and wine was under 1 per cent of alcohol by volume, according to a Wine Australia market bulletin. That volume figure is traced to an industry summary rather than a primary release, so treat it as indicative.
Estimates of the market’s value disagree sharply. IMARC Group puts it at USD 266.33 million in 2025, while Technavio gives USD 531.5 million for the same year. Differences in definition, and the absence of a single official statistics body for wine, are the likely causes. The safe reading is that India is a small market by value, growing from a low base.
Trade policy is changing the picture. The India-Australia agreement has been in force since 29 December 2022. The India-EU free trade agreement was concluded on 27 January 2026 and, as of mid-2026, was awaiting ratification, with agreed terms that cut the tariff on wine over seven years. Each Indian state also sets its own excise rules, which is why the same bottle can sit on shelves at very different prices in different states.
Where Punjab fits
Punjab appears in this history as a grape-growing state rather than a wine-producing one. It grows table grapes commercially, led by Perlette, a seedless variety bred in California by H. P. Olmo. Sources suggest it was released for Punjab in 1967, through Punjab Agricultural University (PAU), Ludhiana; an earlier date of 1964 could not be corroborated. Current sources put Punjab’s grape area at roughly 1,400 hectares, up from about 777 hectares historically, a medium-confidence figure drawn from a cluster of related sources. No commercial wine-grape industry exists there. The one published trial of wine varieties under Punjab conditions that the research located is a PAU study from the 2011-12 season, discussed in growing grapes in north-west India.
Pal Vineyards is a house rooted in Punjab, and its first collection, Malwa, opens in February 2028 by allocation. This note is history, not a description of any wine.
Sources
- ICAR-NRC Grapes (Pune), state-wise grape area and production (2022-23 table) and utilisation data. https://nrcgrapes.icar.gov.in/
- Pal Vineyards research note, Indian Grapes & Wine Industry (updated 2026-06-11, fact-check update 2026-06-30), compiling ICAR-NRC Grapes, WSET India, Sula Vineyards filings and Csizmadia-Honigh, The Wines of India.
- Chittorgarh, Sula Vineyards IPO (listing on BSE and NSE, 22 December 2022). https://www.chittorgarh.com/ipo/sula-vineyards-ipo/1345/
- Indian Television, “Sula Vineyards toasts to record revenue in FY25, wine tourism pours in double-digit growth”. https://www.indiantelevision.com/mam/marketing/brands/sula-vineyards-toasts-to-record-revenue-in-fy25,-wine-tourism-pours-in-double-digit-growth-250411
- Pal Vineyards research note, Indian Wineries: Complete Directory (2026) (updated 2026-07-28), citing Wikipedia (Chateau Indage), Scroll.in (“how the company that built India’s wine industry also brought it down”), Moneylife (court’s decision to wind up Indage), Wikipedia (Sula Vineyards), the Sula Vineyards NSE filing of 25 March 2026, The Drinks Business (Project Paradise, April 2026) and Just Drinks (Tinna Trade acquires Fratelli Wines).
- Indian wine, Wikipedia (per-capita consumption of about 9 millilitres). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_wine
- Pal Vineyards research note, Indian Wine Market: Size, Growth & Consumption (2026) (updated 2026-09-07), citing IMARC Group (https://www.imarcgroup.com/india-wine-market), Technavio (https://www.technavio.com/report/wine-market-in-india-industry-analysis), Wine Australia market bulletin issue 304 and DFAT, Australia-India ECTA.
- European Commission, “EU and India conclude landmark Free Trade Agreement”, 27 January 2026. https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_26_184
- Sommelier India, “EU-India deal: what it means for wine”. https://www.sommelierindia.com/eu-india-deal-what-it-means-for-wine/
- Pal Vineyards research note, Indian Grapes & Wine Industry, fact-check section (2026-06-30), on Perlette and Punjab grape area, citing grapeinsight, The Pharma Journal retrospection and Punjab/PAU summaries (medium confidence).
- Brar, G.S., Gill, M.I.S., Arora, N.K. and Dhaliwal, H.S. (2016), “Fruiting behaviour of table and wine grape varieties under North Indian conditions”, Journal of Applied Horticulture 18(2): 160-163. https://doi.org/10.37855/jah.2016.v18i02.28