Unlike other staid winter evenings, that of November 17 turned out to be an unexpectedly exciting one for wine aficionados in India. In surely the most expensive wine dinner ever in the country, held at one of Mumbai's most exclusive restaurants, over 40 of Indian society's creme-de-la-creme were given the chance to sip celebrated wines from France-based winemaker Chateau Latour, for the first time in the country's history.

According to many wine connoisseurs, Chateau Latour - located in the famous Medoc wine region, about 40 km from the city of Bordeaux - is "the final word in the world of wine". At the United States Embassy in Delhi about three weeks later, another group of Indians was similarly excited when they were invited to raise a glass filled with the wine of California-based winemaker Robert Mandovi, while an equally fortunate lot of beginners and connoisseurs were given an opportunity on the same evening to sip a few of world's top wine brands free of charge at a top hotel in Bangalore.

Events like these are a relatively recent phenomenon in India, but they are certainly not rare. Over the past 18 months, two of the country's top wine importers, Brindco Sales Limited and Sansula Food and Beverages Pvt Limited, along with wine clubs like the Delhi Wine Club, have organised about 100 such events. Suddenly, in well-heeled metropolitan India, wine dinners are emerging as the hottest events of the social season. Celebrating this new awareness are not just the Indian wine aficionados, but a host of global and Indian dealers and growers, all of whom are looking forward to an unprecedented growth of wine sales in the years to come.

"The scope for growth is enormous considering that wine consumption in India is very low compared to other countries," says Sanjay Mennon of Sansula, which imports and sells wine labels from 30 of the world's top winemakers. According to a survey conducted by Rabo India Finance, the Indian subsidiary of Rabo Bank, Indian and imported wines are growing at an impressive rate of 20 per cent every year.

"Although wine consumption in India is still small, it is growing rapidly under the impetus of changing lifestyles, increasing disposable incomes, and wider availability of drinkable wines," says Subhash Arora, president of the Delhi Wine Club. "It is also considered fashionable, and serves to differentiate one from the whisky-swilling crowd of the masses."

Indeed, from the days when serving a US$5 bottle of wine obtained from a local bootlegger was considered a badge of honour among urban Indians, upper crust Indians have now travelled a long way along the wine route where home-grown epicures can distinguish between a Riesling and a Sauvignon Blanc.

Whether it is meant for a year-end gift, celebrations, or just as an accompaniment to kebabs and curries, wine drinking is becoming more visible and a chic alternative to other spirits - like whisky, vodka, or gin - as social drinks.

"Ever since India, as a part of its continual economic liberalisation, removed the restriction on imported liquor about two years back, societies are spawning across the country to elevate appreciation of good wine as a form of art, a taste for which is now considered a must for an upcoming Indian who has just arrived in the upper social strata," says Arora. But this nascent wine culture is not just about the final recognition of fine wines as a necessary luxury by the Indian genteel. It is about hard-headed business too, as scores of global winemakers - as well as Indian ones - are rushing to cash in on an emerging new market. French luxury goods seller Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessey Group, for instance, launched 24 of its wine labels in India this year.

"There is a greater demand for good quality mid-priced wine brands compared to two years ago when only high-end brands were sold," said Moet-Hennessey India's managing director Ashwin Deo.

And, despite astronomical import duties - 265 per cent on landed cost - global winemakers are looking at India as a new Japan, or at least a new China. "We had no presence in Japan 15 years back," said Carlos Soriano, the business development head of Miguel Torres, a Spanish vineyard.

However, despite India's recent enthusiasm towards wine drinking, consumption figures are still quite dispiriting. India currently imports 72,000 wine cases a year - accounting for a mere 4.5 millilitres (ml) of per capita consumption of the billion-plus population, compared to China's 375 ml. Whereas the tiny neighbouring Maldives consumes 40,000 cases a year. Sri Lanka consumes 30,000 cases.

Nevertheless, of the total wine imports, about 85 per cent is consumed by hotels and about 15 per cent by stand-alone restaurants. In this year's new export-import policy, India allowed the country's hotels to use 5 per cent of their foreign exchange revenue to import alcoholic drinks duty-free.

This is one of the reasons why foreign winemakers are optimistic that it won't take long to make Indians consume much more. In the past few months, not only officials of well known and celebrated wine makers - like Kendall-Jackson, California's most awarded winery; France's Vieux Chateau Certin; wine label Henri Bourgeois - have visited the country to promote their brands, new world wines from countries such as Chile, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand and parts of the US have also started trickling in.

Almost every wine seller in India is hoping that India, as a part of the World Trade Organisation, will have to reduce import duties sooner than later, and when that happens, consumption will explode.