Editor’s Letter from the Autumn 2023 Issue

As this issue leaves my desk, I’m beginning to think ahead about the next one — the last issue of 2023. The thought gives me pause. So much has happened since I started dreaming about a wine publication and incorporated it as India’s first magazine on wine in 2004. The name I chose was not immediately intelligible since it was a French word — sommelier — to which I tagged India, which was important to me. It indicated that the magazine was a serious wine publication for Indians and was intended to be a guide to the culture and world of wine in a country that had no wine-drinking culture worth the name. It would go beyond the wine clichés that the media of the time trotted out regularly. To make it official we registered the magazine under the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting and received an RNI Registration Certificate. That was then and here we are now.

The word ‘sommelier’ is bandied about without batting an eyelid and the wine-drinking ecosphere has grown exponentially. So many cut their teeth writing about wine in Sommelier India’s pioneering publication and are now wine experts and connoisseurs with international wine qualifications. I see them everywhere as writers, columnists, importers, sommeliers, educators and wine critics. Mission accomplished. Wine culture is firmly established in India and it makes me very happy. May their tribe increase.