Stung by the rejection of some Indian wines in the international market after chemical residues were found in them, the Ministry of Food Processing Industries (MoFPI), Government of India recently made residue testing of wine grapes mandatory. Wineries will now have to carry out a dual test; first of their grapes and then their wine, to ensure the beverage sails smoothly into the international market. The ministry has already identified the city-based National Research Centre for Grapes as the referral lab and has equipped it with testing machinery.
Henceforth, all wineries in Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka will have to send their samples to the research centre for testing.
"So far, residue testing was being conducted only for table grapes and not wine grapes," Govind Hande, Horticulture Officer, State Agriculture Department, was quoted as saying in a report by Nikhil Deshmukh in The Times of India. Hande looks after 'winenet', an online platform where every wine bottle carries a bar code that can help trace the farm that supplied the grapes for producing the wine. It gives details about the variety of grapes, the area where they were grown, the farm owner and the purchaser of the grapes. "Samples of grapes will now have to be sent for testing before they are harvested. The vineyard will not be allowed to start wine production till it receives a clearance from the research centre regarding the grapes," Hande said. The second test will be done on the wine samples. "If chemical residues are found in the samples, the company will be told to bring down the residue level. As per the new rule, no winery will be permitted to distribute wine without clearing both tests," Hande said.
The state government has proposed that the Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation (MIDC) be the nodal agency for establishing wine grape parks and also be the main link between the Central and state agencies and stakeholders like farmers, processors and service providers. MIDC is developing Godavari Wine Park at Vinchur in Nashik and Krishna Wine Park at Palus in Sangli. It has provided land to entrepreneurs at reasonable rates and other infrastructure facilities like high-quality internal roads, water supply, effluent treatment plants, quality control laboratory, and power and telecom facilities. These parks are meant to increase awareness among investors regarding wineries and grape farmers.