Really, it was just like a wine and food festival anywhere, but this was in India, in Panjii the capital of Goa, and everyone was speaking English - the common language between people from different states and the language of business and the middle classes.
Indian-grown wines on offer ranged between the very good and the disgusting.
The best were made by wineries with overseas expertise, such as Big Bayan which had Italian winemakers, and ND (Nashik District), which had French.
They produce very drinkable, soft-finish reds such as shiraz, zinfandel, cabernet sauvignon and merlot, and sometimes drinkable but often dull whites such as chenin blanc and sauvignon blanc.
India does not spring to mind when you think of wine-producing countries, but it has been growing grapes for centuries, and exports table grapes to Europe.
Wine grapes are a more recent development.
The major wine-growing region is in Maharashtra in the high Western Ghats, inland from Mumbai where recent changes to government regulations has encouraged new wine producers to set up, most with overseas experts and consultants.
One of the oldest and largest is Sula, at Nasik about 200km from Mumbai.
We arrive by motor rickshaw along a bumpy road, but the winery and vineyards look as if they could be almost anywhere.
There's a tasting room - apparently the first in India - and a deck overlooking the vineyard where you can enjoy a platter and a glass of wine.
A group of Indian businessmen at the long counter are tasting wine and listening intently as the varieties and flavours are explained to them.
Sula was founded by Rajeev Samant who quit his hi-tech Silicon Valley job in 1993.
With Kerry Damskey, a leading winemaker from Sonoma Valley in California, he planted the first vines in Nasik in 1997 on family land and now has more than 400ha of vineyards in several districts.
Chaitanya Rathi shows us round the vineyard and winery, explaining how they manage to grow grapes and make wine in a tropical climate.
Because the vineyards are more than 600m above sea level it's hot during the day, but in the evenings it gets chilly, giving a daily variation of about 20degC, which is what wine growers around the world value.
However, this part of India has no real winter and vines have to be tricked into dormancy.
After the grapes are harvested in January or February, the vines are heavily pruned which stops them fruiting again in September.
The monsoon rains come from June to September and when they are over, the vines are pruned again in early October.
Although they could produce two crops a year, it puts pressure on the vines and the quality of the grapes harvested after the monsoon was not good, according to Mr Rathi.
There are other problems specific to distributing wine in India.
Mr Rathi said Sula had switched to screw-cap closures instead of cork but it was not for the usual reasons of bottle variation and cork taint, nor because few Indians have corkscrews or know how to use them.
It was because trucks were often held up on bad roads for hours, if not days, and the heat made the wine expand and pushed the corks out, which spoiled the wine.
Sula vineyards: www.sulawines.com
Charmian Smith visited India with assistance from an Asia NZ Foundation journalists award.
