The Sparkling Potential Of Making Exotic Fruit Wines

Wines made from tropical fruits like jamun and kokum has additional health benefits, and opens up basket of business opportunities.

- Professor SS Lele

Wine is fermented juice of grapes, berries or fruits and was developed primarily as a method of preservation rather than for intoxication. Majority of the wine in the world is produced from grapes. During wine production, the natural fruit sugars are fermented into alcohol and carbon dioxide. Red wine is made by crushing grapes of purple or red varieties and allowing skin, pulp and seeds to remain with juice during fermentation period. White wines are made from pigmented grapes by removal of skins, pulp and seed before juice fermentation. Wines might be "fortified”, "table”, or "sparkling”. In fortified wines, brandy is added to make the alcohol content higher (around 14 to 30 percent). These are less perishable and may be stable without pasteurisation. Also, sucrose (normal sugar) may be added externally to the fruit juice to achieve higher alcohol content (>12 percent) which helps preservation and also the kick on consumption. If no external sugar is added, fruit wines could have 8 to 10 percent alcohol formed by natural fruit sugars. Wines are termed table/still or sparkling depending upon the amount of dissolved CO2 content. The carbon dioxide may be formed naturally during fermentation or may be sparged externally. It is important to note the famous “French Paradox”. French people have a relatively low incidence of coronary heart disease in spite of having fatty food based diet rich in saturated fats. The scientific reason for their good health is attributed to their regular consumption of various wines with meals – before, during, after which protects the health due to alcohol along with antioxidants like coloured pigments (anthocynins) and bioactives polyphenols, resveratrol. Hence, it is important that Indian consumer and the government as well differentiates between wines and other alcoholic drinks like whisky.