INDIAN WINE ACADEMY
A-458, Defence Colony
New Delhi – 110024 Phone- +91-11- 41622892
Website: www.indianwineacademy.com, www.delwine.com
E-Mail: arora@delwine.com, wineguyindia@gmail.com vinexpoindia@delwine.com
Twitter and Instagram: Wineguyindia
Facebook: Indian Wine Academy (closed group), Indian Wine Day, delWine IWA, Subhash Arora39, delWine Excellence Awards
ACTIVITIES: SUMMARY
Indian Wine Academy (IWA) is a New Delhi-based market development consultancy firm with extensive contacts among wine and food professionals and hotel management institutes around the country. It helps professionally to facilitate increased consumption of wine and promotion of wine culture in India. It organizes and conducts programmes pan India to help foreign companies enter the Indian market and Indian producers sell more wine, besides motivating consumers to drink better wine in moderation.
It was launched in 2003 by IT entrepreneur Subhash Arora, Founder President of Delhi Wine Club, an avid wine promoter and journalist, speaker, international judge and author.
IWA launched delWine, the country’s first online eNewsletter on wine, food business, and retail and hospitality sectors in April 2006. The complimentary India-centric weekly eNewsletter is sent to 37,000 subscribers in 77 countries – 944 issues have been sent till 31 December 2023. It disseminates useful, timely information about the Indian wine industry including the government policies and taxation policies, while briefing the readers about the world markets too.
Today, it is a benchmark for bold, objective and timely reporting about the Indian market. The subscribers include producers, food and wine importers and exporters, hospitality decision-makers, consumers, retail sector heads and hotel management institutes and students throughout the world.
IWA has organised several wine appreciation programmes throughout India and helped several wine shows like IFE India organise wine seminars. It organised highly successful Master classes for Sicilian wines in 5 cities in 2012 and 2013. IWA organised a Seminar on Bulgarian Wines in 2013 at their Embassy where Arora was also the keynote speaker.
IWA collaborated regularly with ProChile in organizing an evening of Chilean wines and food for a decade. IWA has the unique distinction of making India participate under the Indian flag for the first time in Singapore at ‘Wine for Asia’ in 2005. It helps in organising visits of the right-profiled importers to foreign countries. Indian producers also show-cased their wines for the first time at the World Wine Symposium in Villa d’Este in 2012 and repeated in 2013, thanks to IWA which has also been media partners of the World Bulk Wine Exhibition in Amsterdam for several years.
Our official website, www.indianwineacademy.com was voted as the Best Wine Website 2011 by Comitato Grandi Cru d’Italia in Verona.
Personal Profile
Subhash Arora is a prolific wine writer, author, journalist, international judge, speaker, consultant, educator and a wine club promoter of international repute. He is the Editor and major content provider of delWine. He is also the India Correspondent of Meininger’s Wine Business International Germany. He also writes occasionally for newspapers and magazines in India and abroad.
Arora is an electrical engineer from IIT Delhi and an FIE (Fellow of Institute of Engineers)- the highest level of membership in the national professional association. After working in Germany for a year, he went on to the US and completed his MSIE and MBA from the University of Minnesota. An IT entrepreneur, he has been a wine evangelist and ambassador for the last 20 years, singularly devoted to the promotion of wine culture in India.
He has judged in 72 international wine competitions.*
He has participated in several Shows including the Torino Wine Show twice and the Alba White Truffle Show in 2009 and several other wine shows in Italy, France, South Africa, Austria and Spain. He was the only Indian delegate at the first ever World Wine Symposium held at Villa d’Este, Lake Como in 2009. He attended 5 editions consecutively till 2013.
He was invited to speak to producers at Vinitaly in Verona in 2002 and 2006, Alimentaria 2006 (Barcelona), Madrid Fusion 2007, Chile in MundusVini in 2018. He was invited to deliver talks on the Indian market and consumer trends in Fenavin 2007 at Ciudad de Real, Spain, Prowein 2007, Vinitaly 2006 and Wine for Asia Singapore 2005 and 2008.
He was invited to speak at the first National Wine Convention of IGPB in Delhi, 2010, Fruit Wine Conference in Shillong in 2011 and several other similar platforms in India including visiting overseas delegations. Recently, He spoke at the International Wine Tourism Conference at Barcelona on Indian Wine Tourism in April, 2016.
He was invited by the Government of Rioja to participate in the Grandes de la Rioja 2006 tasting of the region's wines. He went for the Tuscan Tastings in Feb. 2009-2011 and 2013-2020 where he tasted the new arrivals of Chianti Classico, Chianti, San Gimignano, Nobile di Montepulciano and Brunello di Montalcino wines. He has also been in May 2009, 2010 and 2011 to Alba to taste Barbaresco, Barolo and Roero's newly released vintages. He visited Porto and Douro wineries and Priorat region in Spain in 2011 and the Austrian Wine Summit before that. He was invited to attend ‘Must Fermenting Ideas’ wine conference in Estoril, Portugal for all the 3 editions in 2017-19.
He regularly visits various wineries in the world, tasting different varieties. He was invited to the prestigious Premier Napa Valley auction in 2012. He went to Chile in 2010 and 2016, and visited about 20 wineries. He has also visited wineries in several countries including Georgia (2015), Slovenia (2015), Thailand (2015), Bulgaria (2016, Greece (2016). Portugal (2017, 18, 19), Hungry (2018), Switzerland (2019) and China (2017-18-19). He is a regular visitor to Italy, Spain, Austria, France, Germany, South Africa.
Some of the other shows where he went as a journalist were Top wine 2006, 2008 (Huelva, Andalucía) and Vinoble - the biennial international exposition of dessert and fortified wines in 2006, 2008, 2010 in Jerez, Vinitaly 2008, Cape Wine Show 2008, Arezzo Wines 2009, Rimini Fiera 2010 and later several shows like Vinexpo, Vinisud, VieVinum, Vinea, Madrid Fusion, Alimentaria, Singapore and Hong Kong. He has been invited to Italy several times to visit vineyards and wineries of Prosecco, Torino and around, Soave, Valpolicella, Friuli, Chianti Classico and Montalcino, Piemonte, Sicily, Puglia, Lazio, Emilia Romagna, Franciacorta and Marche. He also frequents the biennial International Wine and Heart Health Convention in the USA attended mostly by doctors and heart specialists.
He has addressed several delegations and groups of interested producers in Italy, Spain, Chile and Napa. He addressed the producers of British Columbia in Canada through video conferencing in 2013 and helped them launch an export programme to India.
Under the leadership of Arora, the Delhi Wine Club he founded in 2002 successfully organized 300 events till July, 2020 when he took a voluntary retirement and was made Chairman Emeritus. He has organised several other wine promotional events in the leading hotels and restaurants in Delhi including one at the Estate of the President of India. He has conducted similar events in Mumbai, Kolkata, Bangalore, Pune and Chandigarh. He is an avid supporter of the Indian wine industry and frequently visits different wineries and exhorts producers to focus on wine tourism and improve quality to help increase wine consumption, with the objective of reducing consumption of liquor and other high alcohol beverages.
In the first-ever survey conducted by Wine Business International, he was voted the best wine journalist of India in 2006. He was nominated for the ‘Best Foreign Wine Journalist Award’ by the Grandi Cru d’Italia in 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013. Arora was knighted by the Italian President in 2009 and awarded the official title of Cavaliere for his meritorious service in building friendly ties between India and Italy through wine promotion and education.
He also co-authored the Italian Wine Guide 2006, the first book of its kind in India. He was the first-ever Indian to be awarded the prestigious OIV Merit Award at the 34th International Conference on Vines and Wines in Porto, Portugal on June 24, 2011 for his outstanding service to the vine and wine industry globally. Earlier, as a catalyst he had helped facilitate India’s entry into OIV as a full member in record time.
He co-founded Indian Wine Day in 2017 to promote Indian wines and declared November 16 as the Indian Wine Day. Three editions have been held successfully across India. He founded delWine Excellence Awards in 2016, the second edition of which was organised very successfully on April 21, 2019 at Hotel Pullman New Delhi Aerocity. The Awards also included the Indian Top Ten Women of Wine Biennial Award started in 2013 by him to encourage and recognise women in the wine industry in India.
He has been associated with the Indo- Italian Chamber of Commerce & Industry in conducting the First level of wine courses introduced as a part of the global strategy, as a faculty member. He conducts Masterclasses for them regularly in Pan India. He accompanied members of the Italics Wine Club to Vinitaly 2018. He was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award earlier this year by IIHM Kolkata and IHC London for his services to the wine industry.
* Wine Competitions judged
Last updated: 31 December, 2023