A drink is to be smelled, swirled, tasted, perceived, rationalised and even masticated.

Now it's all about snob drinking. The wisdom of brands, their subtle aggrandisement, the trial marriage of liquor and food, the quality and categories of inebriation, the qualities and categories of hangovers, the post mortem. Drinking in India is no longer about slapdash gulps of a liquid intoxicant without worrying about antecedents, about grape or grain. A drink is to be smelled, swirled, tasted, perceived, rationalised and even masticated. As numerous liquor brands, ranging from wines to whiskies to liqueur, enter India to create both awareness and snobbery, bars and pubs and bootleggers are strengthening their menus in order to stay in the huge business of public and personal drinking.

Says Sanjay Menon of Mumbai-based Sansula International, which distributes beverage brands from across the world in India: "There is a revolution in the way people are approaching liquor. It's no longer a drink. It's a ceremony."

Take wine, the most fashionable fluid to hit the Indian taste buds in recent years. About five years ago it was nonexistent in whisky-partial beverage menus and you would usually take the risk of embarrassing your host if you asked for a glass. Bootleggers, more preoccupied with Black Label and its blended brothers, had only leftover embassy stock or B&G and spoke in the brusque language of "white or reds".

The turning point was the late 1990s, when both private and quasi-private invitations had the attractant, "Wine and cheese will be served" and very quickly, like a Miyake scent or a Versace belt, both become an obligatory component of revelry. (Seduction through invitation has since become upstartish).

Former French ambassador Claude Blanchmaison added to the growing interest by holding a number of wine tasting sessions, which have been continued by his successor Bernard de Montferrand as well Indian distributors like Brindco. Now, the drink could even be on the verge of overtaking vegetable Manchurian as the most gratifying appetiser (some experts have already said that the union of dal makhni and burgundy is one of the great marriages in contemporary food history).

This is when you consider that most of India doesn't have the ideal temperature for keeping good wine. After 18 degrees Celsius it gets increasingly ill-tempered (i.e. acerbic) and at a dreaded 45 degrees Celsius, Delhi's current ignition rate, it might well be used as an hospital antiseptic. Added to this fact is that though the quantitative restrictions were lifted on April 1 last year, the euphoria died as quickly with the accompanying announcement of a ludicrously high import duty. But according to Rajiv Singhal, who became an eonophile hanging around the cellars of New Haven in the US, the grey market will always be there to fill the gap. "Now bootleggers are even talking about Chablis and Chardonnay."

Singhal, who was earlier the secretary of the Wine Society in Delhi, had invited one of Europe's most famous sommeliers, Frenchman Franck Thomas, for day-long interactive sessions, and was impressed by the way participants developed a critical faculty. By the second series in Bangalore they were even discussing the 21-odd grape varieties that go into a Chateau Neuf du Pape or comparing a Chilean Chardonnay to an "unripe banana, overripe apple and a just ripe cauliflower".

Encouraged by the rise of this fruit-vegetable lexicon, Subhash Arora, a Delhi-based it businessman, started The Wine Club to promote wine, among other things, as a good-for-the-heart health drink. He says he's lobbying hard to convince the Government to slash the import duties on what is clearly the poster drink of the new millennium.

Whisky, its more plebeian relative, is also becoming snobbish. Salt content, smokiness, barley, rye, molasses and the local parodies of Scotch come under scrutiny in whisky tasting-nosing drills that are commonplace in both Delhi and Mumbai. Chivas Regal, a snooty brand (which, in India had formed a cosy relationship with the tangri kebab), had tasting sessions as did The Famous Grouse, which got in-house instructor Serena Cowel to explain how water effects the briny taste of Bunnahabhain and how Tamdhu was peatier but lighter.

Whisky buff Anil Dharker even began a Single Malt Club in Mumbai to honour the growing camaraderie of discerning drinkers. The club now has 70 members, including bankers, CEOs, admen and filmmakers like Prahlad Kakkar, Shyam Benegal and Shantanu Sheorey. "Earlier people had anything as long as the liquid was dark coloured or amber," he remembers. "Now they are going for the taste."

The days of spirit monotheism-those that either stick to whisky or rum or beer-are also numbered. As Aditya Gootu, the Chivas Regal marketing manager observes, the type of drink depends on the time of day, the occasion and the company. Martini could be had at lunch, a strawberry margarita with friends, Glenmorangie for an executive dinner and a light wine for a pre-dinner cocktail. "Stereotype drinking is out and diversity is in," says Gootu.

Which also means discarding old mixes for new. In the cocktail sector, a popular frontier in alcohol experimentation, faithful companions like Bloody Mary or Screw Driver are being upstaged by supercilious entrants like the champagne-based Kir Royale and Bellini and the vodka-peach schnapps fusion, Sex on the Beach.

A devout cocktail polytheist who crawls the multiplying pubs of the Indian metros (six new ones have come up in Delhi alone in the past four months), now knows that Cinzano is a woody vermouth that goes well with Martini and calls for Sangria (wine-based mix) as easily as for CTC sandwiches. Rishi, the manager at Rick's at Delhi's Taj Mahal hotel, incredulously informs that it has been over six months since the last time someone asked for a Bloody Mary. "Youngsters are now looking for something fashionable and extraordinary ... the 'cool cocktail'. If you drank something that your mom did, you're dated."

Bacardi, the white rum brand that is in the forefront of entertainment sponsorship, established a fashionable apartheid in rum culture when drinkers began to discard its darker Indian cousins for a newer, lighter taste, in either cocktails or inert propellants like soda and water. Bacardi tirelessly sponsors at least one major blast a month in any of the metros.

The other liquor in the thick of passionate espousal is vodka, a protean drink that is known to acquire the personality of added flavours and of the people who drink it. It's also popular because it is considered less foppish than wine, much younger than whisky and not nearly as reactionary as dark rum ... or country liquor.

Vodka in India is now everywhere: in cocktails, with green chillies, with gherkins, with artichoke hearts, with soda, with collegians, with professionals, homemakers, cigarettes, encyclopaedias, metaphysical poetry and FIFA World Cup matches. The chic brand is the Swedish Absolut, not yet available in India, but as ubiquitous as the drink itself (otherwise Smirnoff takes its place). The Absolut umbrella has flavours like Citron, Kurrant and Pepper that have revolutionised the way vodka is drunk in India.

So, to display vodka haughtiness, Absolut Mandarian, the latest child of the family, is now being noticed at private parties ... just like the Rs 5 lakh worth wine cellars imported from Italy to plug the wine-temperature disparity. As snob drinking comes of age, it's not just the sweet acoustics of clinking glasses that leaves an impression but quality and uniqueness of what goes into them. Toddy and mahua could well be next.