| Who Should Pay For Bad Wine Bottle | | | | By: Subhash Arora |  Page 1 of 2 next >> |
I had started the evening tasting with Moet & Chandon to celebrate the inauguration of the new Bangalore facilities of National Instruments, a billion dollar Texas based IT company. The nine wines selected for tasting were Azure Bay, Kendall Jackson and Fontanelle Banfi Chardonnays, Beaujolais Villages from Louis Jadot, Sula Satori Merlot, Kendall Jackson Pinot Noir, Oxford Landing Cab-Shiraz and as the grand finale, Gaja Promis, all purchased locally from Metro Cash & Carry.
A pretty decent selection that, for an august gathering that varied from novices to not- so- novices who were there to enjoy the tasting experience. One hoped that after the end of the evening there would be a few converts to the wine religion. At the very least, they would feel more confident in the company of wine drinkers and relish wine better in future.
The guests were enjoying the unidentifiable aromas, the incessant fizz of the tiny bubbles and the fresh, crisp flavour of the champagne. While we were still at the rudimentary stage of wine tasting discussion, the efficient waiters from the Taj catering had opened the next wine in line, Azure Bay Chardonnay from New Zealand , getting a hint from the corner of my eye. While the interaction on the beauty of champagne was on, I saw some people already engaging their palates with the chard, ‘ahead of the class’.
Looking at the dark golden colour of the wine from a distance, my instinct warned me something was amiss. When the glass was brought to me, the aroma was …yuk, so off-putting, almost putrid. The colour was unappetising dark gold and so was the flavour which was not that of acetic acid but certainly not of apples or peaches it promises on the label. The wine was flat, dull and simply off. It was a case (two bottles, actually) of bad storage or simply the wine dying out on us due to old age.
The question is: who should bear the cost of these two bottles of wine in the purgatory state waiting to attain the only possible state of nirvana- poor quality vinegar. After the purchase, the bottles had been stored properly in the fridge. Clearly, the customer cannot be blamed for the wine being bad.
Is Metro at fault? Or the distributor? Or the importer, or should one blame the producer? The producer could be faulted for churning out this cheap quality wine, of course, but that fact is known to the importer and he prices it accordingly. He might even have negotiated an umbrella rebate for wine to be defective or corked, a universal occurrence of 2-5%.
There is no doubt in my mind that the customer should be given an immediate replacement or refund immediately. The matter can be sorted out between various other links of the chain. In any consumer product, the law protects the customer from a defective product and the retailer is the agent who is accountable to him for any defects. For defective products one can also approach the producer directly. This may not be practical for imported wines, anyway.
IT laws have been formulated only recently in India, IT being a new phenomenon. In wines too, this area of satisfactory quality is still nebulous and will need to be handled with care and prudence.
With so many wines in the market, of past vintages that have become ‘defective’ by losing out their original characteristics, the issue will gain more significance as retail sale opens up. I was checking out a popular retail store in South Delhi recently when a customer walked in with a bottle that had exactly the same problem as the Azure Bay and the store manager was tizzy trying to ward off the complainant and creating a lot of unpleasantness. Such situations are bound to increase.
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