Beer With It: Let’s start with India’s first stout beer, Haywards Black. What’s a stout beer you

Lager vs Ale—The Bubble Story: Beers can be classified into ales and lagers, based on the type of yeast used for fermentation. Ales are produced with yeasts that rise to the top at the end of fermentation. Lagers are produced with bottom fermenting yeasts. Lagers also undergo a process of cold storage or maturation after fermentation, before they are drunk. Most lagers are light in colour, like Kingfisher or Castle or Foster’s. Ales are generally darker in colour

may ask? Heard of Guinness? Well, Guinness is a stout beer and if you have seen Guinness being poured into a glass (dark black in colour) or tasted it, you would have realised that it is markedly different from the normal lager beer that we drink. There are two major types of beer—lagers and ales—and stout is a form of ale. Haywards follows in the footsteps of its more illustrious brethren with its jet-black colour, rich creamy foam and incredible mouth feel. To truly appreciate the difference, try this simple experiment—just taste a lager and a Haywards, both ice-cold. You might turn away a believer, not necessarily abandoning your favourite Kingfisher, but definitely letting one more product into your portfolio of choices.

Winning Streak: Now, let’s move on to organic wines. Organic wine, as the name implies, does not use pesticides or synthetic fertilisers. Bonterra makes a range of organic wines—Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, Merlot and Syrah—and claims that it does not use anything that interferes with the natural flavour of the grape. It uses techniques like composting, cover crops and soil management. Organic makes good business sense too as grape yields per acre are pretty much the same as those that use pesticides and other synthetic fertilisers. However, when it comes to taste, I feel, Bonterra is no different from its inorganic counterparts. Organic wine is an interesting addition to a wine market that is growing at over 40%. It is attracting not only local companies but also the world’s leading wine luminaries. Some local companies have even tried to enter the niche segments. While Sula has been importing Japanese rice wine Sake, Delhi's Mohan Brothers are working on Ice wine imports.

The Herbal Way: It’s Valentine's Day and it seems an odd night for a pair of talking stags to be

Organic wine is an interesting addition to the wine market that is growing at over 40%

holding forth at Enigma in JW Marriott, Mumbai. But hold forth they do as the mascots for Jagermeister come alive through a series of ads on the large screen. The liqueur market in India is marginal with established brands like Marie Brizard and Bols already there. So the entry of a relatively unknown brand like herb liqueur—Jagermeister—from Wolfenbuttel, Germany, was a surprise. Jagermeister has taken an "unliqueur" route to market the brand. World over too it is traditionally positioned as a night club or party drink and is best enjoyed neat, "colder than ice", dispensed through specially patented dispensers.

From The Hunter: Jagermeister in German means expert hunter. The brand’s logo features the head of a stag with a cross between its antlers and refers to the tale of St Hubert. Hubertus, a young wastrel from Toulouse in the 7th century, won the hand of his fair maiden, Floribana, in a battle but the princess died soon after. Overcome by grief, Hubertus took to hunting solitarily in the Ardennes. On one such hunt, he came across a stag with a cross floating between its antlers. The vision so moved Hubertus that he gave all his material riches to the poor. Thus, he became a saint

An Apple A Day: Himachal-based Green Valley Cider has finally decided to do something interesting with all those apples and started making Tempest Cider, an alcoholic beverage made primarily from the juices of specially grown varieties of apples. Green Valley's cidery is located at Shoghi in Shimla. Tempest Cider is not widely distributed and I think it still has some distance to go in product refinement. However, it is a brave attempt by an Indian producer to launch something new. Considering that a bulk of the products described above have been launched by relatively small companies, the market is definitely promising for existing as well as new players. But what will be worth watching is the scenario when the multinational liqueur houses start ramping up brand launches and bringing in niche products from their wine variety of portfolios to India.