SHILLONG: At a time when the harder variety owned by big companies find legal recognition for sale through wine shops in the nook and cranny, homemade brew is yet to see the light of day.
The Shillong Wine Festival, which is 15 years old now, is a case in point here.
Forever Young Club, which has endeavoured to promote locally-made fruit wines through the festival, has not lost hope though despite the pleas to legalise wine making falling on deaf ears.
“The government has till date not legalised fruit wine making which could have provided a lot of employment opportunities to the local wine makers. But we are still hopeful that our pleas would be heard soon,” said president of Forever Young Club, Michael Syiem.
Speaking to mediapersons here on the sidelines of the 15th Shillong Wine Festival, Syiem said they recently met the Excise Minister, urging him to legalise wine making, which would have given the much-needed boost to tourism and even the horticulture department.
“It’s just a matter of Cabinet decision,” he said, while ruing that while the government departments were encouraging locally-made wines in different festivals such as Cherry Blossom festival, the government was yet to make their sale legal.
“The horticulture department, for its part, will soon be organising a fruit wine making festival in Nongstoin,” Syiem said.
He pointed out that states such as Mizoram and Manipur, despite being dry states, were going ahead with local wine-making whereas Meghalaya was yet to take a call on the matter.
According to Syiem, different fruits are grown in the region throughout the year and these could have been utilised for wine making which can promote cottage industry besides providing employment.
“When tourists come here, they always want to taste local wine but they don’t get the variety in shops as it is not legalised,” he said, while citing an example of Sikkim where local wines are sold in shops and easily available.
Syiem also rued the fact that the organisation which was paying Rs 1500 for obtaining the temporary (daylong) bar license for holding the wine festival, had to shell out a “whopping” Rs 15,000 this year.
At least 12 wine makers from different parts of the state apart from one from Assam, set up stalls at the festival.
