Goodbye beer, hello mango wine

Wine, which in Shakespeare's days was almost eponymous with the grape, has since taken on numerous avatars – plum, elderberry, and gooseberry wine, for instance. Rice wine (sake), apple wine (cider), and honey wine (mead), have an almost equal antiquity in their own countries, and several of them have made a splash in the international arena as well. But now there is a new kid on the block – watch out for mango wine, made in (you guessed it) India!

Not many would have thought that the delicious mango, arguably India's most beloved fruit, would lend itself to the heady plume of beverages. But that is just what seems to be happening. A team of researchers from the Central Institute of Subtropical Horticultural Research (CISHR) in Lucknow has produced wine using three types of mangoes - dussehri, langra and chis - which are grown in abundance in Uttar Pradesh, its director H Ravishankar has announced.

Traditionally, the best (and most expensive) wines are of course produced from grapes – most famously in France, but generally all over continental Europe and more lately, California and Australia. Now India is set to join the group in its usual inimitable fashion, with its own unique product. The wine is the result of three years of research and experimentation, Ravishankar said.

He added that CISHR, mandated to undertake basic and applied research to enhance productivity and develop value addition to major and minor subtropical fruits, had undertaken the research 30 years ago. That early effort was abandoned, but after many years' delay, a team of scientists headed by Neelima Garg made a fresh attempt and succeeded in producing wine from mangoes.

A member of the research team said alcohol content in the wine produced from the king of fruits was 8-9 per cent. The alcohol content in most wines made from grapes is in the 12-15 per cent range. The flavour of wines made out of different varieties of the king of fruits varies according to the fruit's flavour, the researcher (unnamed, as usual in an institution run by the Indian government) added.

CISHR was initially set up as the Central Mango Research Station in Uttar Pradesh, the homeland of the dashehari mango, in 1972 under the aegis of the Indian Institute of Horticultural Research, Bangalore.