B.C. wines head to India

A Kelowna area wine producer hopes India is the next hot market for B.C. wine.

Karnail Singh Sidhu of Kalala Organic Estate Winery is one of two producers flying about 1,000 bottles of ice wine and Riesling to India this week.

"We are excited," he said. "Everybody is excited at the winery."

Sidhu says Bollywood movies and TV programs are now frequently showing people drinking wine, and that’s spurred a growth in wine consumption by about 30 per cent a year.

"When we were going up mostly all you see the people drinking in movies is hard liquor. Now it’s more and more people drinking wine on shows, Indian shows and Indian movies," he told CBC News.

"The new generation and the upper middle class people are more and more getting into wine than getting away from the hard liquor."

Sidhu hopes B.C. ice wine and white wine varieties will go over well with consumers in India.

He plans to be shipping his organic wine by the container to Bangalore by spring, and hopes to expand into other provinces to meet the growing demand.