If one were to judge a wine list at a 5-star hotel in India for the least profitability to make a wine statement, the latest hotel that opened in Worli last week, the Four Season  would stand head and shoulder above any other hotel, bar or restaurant from Kashmir to Kanyakumari.

I strongly recommend every Mumbaiker or anyone visiting Mumbai to choose this hotel for a glass or a bottle of wine at the most respectable prices. I would also highly recommend Sauvignon Blanc 2007 Saint Clair from New Zealand, at Rs. 2800 a bottle. Don't forget that Mumbai has the painful 200% excise duty too, and this hotel pays an additional customs duty of 160% as well!

When Vishal Kadakia of Wine Park told me last Saturday that the Sauvignon Blanc I tasted at J W Marriott with the owners of Saint Clair was selling at Rs. 2800 at this newly opened hotel, I made quick mental calculations. The gross profit margin would be around 40%- definitely less than 50%. I decided to rush to the hotel and check out the prices for myself. And I am glad I did!

Andrew De Brito, Director F & B of Hotel Four Seasons

The hotel has had a soft opening earlier in the week. The Italian Restaurant Prato had just opened and the Indian Restaurant San:Qi was to open the next day. There was a private party being hosted by the Swiss General manager Armando Kraenzlin who is also the Regional Vice President. That would also mean that Andrew De Brito, Director of Food & Beverage would also be busy with the fiesta. But I had to check out the price list.

Fortunately, the very first man I ran into was Andrew who was shuttling between welcoming guests to the Prato and the San:Qi which is practically outside the main hotel and has a separate entrance, without entering the lobby. Andrew is a Malaysian of Indian origin who worked in the Maldives property of Four Seasons before coming here over a year ago.

Soft-spoken and unassuming, the young F & B Director is very proud of the wine prices at the hotel. Make no mistakes about the quality of the restaurants and the hotel. Let me first predict that this will soon be a page 3 destination. In fact, I wasn't surprised when Rajeev Samant, owner of Sula walked by as I was doing the 'audit' of the wine list.

Prato is a fine dining restaurant where a dish can cost as much as Rs.1300 and the Primi Piatti can be as expensive as Rs.1100. The chef's menu seems to be the only reasonable choice at Rs.3500 and the surprise menu at Rs.4200 does look mysterious. Therefore, it is a pleasant surprise that you can find Bruno Paillard Champagne for Rs. 5000 a bottle. Even a Merlot, Chateau de Francs which retails for Rs. 1540 has been priced at Rs.2500 with a mark up of a high 60%!

The wine list is rather limited right now, but as Andrew explains it, 50 labels are to be added in a day or so. The hotel already has a wine-by-the-glass policy with wines as low as Rs. 380 for a 150 mL glass of Italian Pinot Grigio (don't forget to curse the Excise department for the 200% excise duty while sipping), a Chianti at Rs.500. I would recommend a glass of Chateau Meyney Cru Bourgeois at Rs. 800 to any red wine lover-especially the Bordeaux kind.

Just as in Shangri-la at Delhi, the prices for each glass have been priced exactly a fifth of the bottle. The Rs. 5000 Champagne can be had for Rs.990 a glass. Though it does not beat the fantastic price of Rs. 450 a glass of VCP at Shangri-la but the extra duties of 360% that the hotel pays, make you commend the hotel.

Provintech machine for by-the-glass wine service

The wine-by-the-glass which incidentally the Indian Wine Academy has been recommending to the hotels for the last 4 years as a bare necessity to encourage new drinkers to try out different wines, has been made possible by a 12-bottle French dispenser Provintech from France. The Paris-made product is not as sleek and sophisticated looking as the Italian equivalent but is adequate in keeping the wine fresh and easily dispensable and might even be cheaper. In any case this is the standard machine being deployed by various Four Seasons properties, Andrew tells me.

What are the challenges he has faced so far in the wine programme? "The biggest problem has been the storage at the distributors' end", says he. You cannot imagine the pathetic conditions of storage where 32 or even 34 ° C are more the rule than the exception with most distributors. One of the perennial problems apart from high taxes, this one factor alone in which the total chain including the distributors and the consumers, is weak. They still believe that storing the bottles horizontally in a corner of the house or the warehouse with an ambient temperature of 35° C is good enough.

Armando Kraenzlin who joins us for a while in the meantime, has been in the hotel industry for 20 years and has also come here from the Maldives property. 'Whenever we go out to restaurants here, we found people drinking beer. So we decided to keep the wine prices extremely low so a guest can automatically order a bottle of wine with the meals,' he said when I asked him how they could afford to keep the profit margins so low when the other hotels could not afford to keep them less than 500%.

Is it a marketing gimmick? A lolly for the hotel opening? A loss leader? An example of leadership by action? We shall find out as the hotel starts chirping very soon. Till then, enjoy the reasonable priced wines and support them as they are paying full customs duties too. Who knows, they might pass on the benefits to you when the duties are waived based on their foreign exchange earnings?

At an average gross profit margin of less than 50%, the hotel deserves kudos and an 'Oscar' for this category. Are other 5-stars in Mumbai listening?

Subhash Arora