The heady path to a floral wine

Rose sherbets, rose petal based sweets are common in India. Now get ready to smell the roses in a floral wine.

Pune-based entrepreneur Jayashri Yadav has received a patent for a wine derived from roses. More important, the change in Excise Department laws in Maharashtra now allows her to have a licence to make wine from flowers. Till 2017, the Maharashtra Excise Department only issued licenses to fruit-based wines. But Yadav has become the first person to be granted a license to make floral wine.

Yadav’s tryst with roses started in early 2000 when she started a home-based business of making Gulkand (a sweet preserve/jam of rose petals) with a production of 100 kg. Today, that garden enterprise has scaled to the size of an SME with 15 tonnes yearly production of Gulkand, Rose Sherbet and Rose Water.

The next step for Yadav is to set up a wine-making unit for which talks are on with lenders. Wine would be made of crushed rose petals with sugar as the base. Fermented sugar will give the alcohol taste while rose will lend its flavour.

On the scent of the rose

Yadav says she got hooked to the scent of roses when after her MA she attended a short course in Herbal processing. She was inspired by her teachers to make some products out of roses. It led to her first batch of Gulkand, which was very well received in Pune.

By 2001 she had set up her own company Jayashri Products and soon started expanding her portfolio — all based on roses. In 2007-08 she started experimenting and lab testing with Rose wine. By that time her daughter Kashmira had earned a diploma in wine technology from Melbourne, which helped immensely in the experiment. Yadav’s initial attempts at getting a patent were not successful. But helped by Pune-based Patent Lawyer Ganesh Hingmire, her efforts bore fruit in August when the Controller of Patent granted her the patent for Rose-based wine.

Now armed with her licence she is all set to go commercial. For her winery, she would be sourcing roses from her own farm where they are grown organically.

Hingmire said that Jayashri Yadav’s achievement is unique, not only as a successful businesswoman but also as an innovator with a patent to her name.

Globally, flower wines — especially from dandelions and elderflowers — are quite popular. Now, soon, we could have our own heady floral edition too.