Talisva winery owner Sushma Sanjay with her son and CEO of the company Akarsh Sanjay
| Photo Credit: SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT

When Sushma Sanjay, founder of Shivamogga-based Talisva Winery, started making wines as a hobby in 2005, she was inclined towards the produce available in the Malnad region in Karnataka. However, only her friends and family were fortunate enough to taste her wines. Gradually, Sushma saw the potential to develop her hobby into a business with the help of her son Akarsh Sanjay, currently based out of San Francisco. Within a decade and a half, Sushma’s pastime grew into a family-run enterprise, selling premium wine varieties such as grape, pineapple, orange-honey, ginger-honey, and even Jamun.  

However, they were yet to launch a wine utilising Shivamogga’s most widely grown produce — areca nuts. In November 2024, after years of research and trial and error, Talisva launched a dessert wine with betel leaf and areca nuts. “My parents have been living on a farm for many years. Being areca nut farmers, we wanted to have our farm-grown crop curated into wines,” says Akarsh, who is also the CEO of Talisva.

“We started solely with the betel leaves and slowly infused the areca seeds into it. We have a secret process for infusing the seeds,” says Sushma.  

For the wine, a base prepared with honey and locally-sourced betel leaves is fermented with yeast for a month. The following steps include filtering this brew multiple times, racking it (moving it from one container to another), infusing the areca nut into this mixture and ageing it in a stainless-steel tank for around four months. No alcohol is added to accelerate the process or to strengthen the wine, and sweetening is done completely using honey, says the owners. 

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“This whole process takes around five months. The betel nut is also seasonal. You get the yield only from November to February,” says Sushma. 

The wine has an alcohol content of nine percent and is currently sold in nearly 150 outlets in Karnataka at ₹950 for a 375ml bottle, says Akarsh.

The owners want to expand their business beyond Karnataka considering paan’s pan-India appeal. They are also looking into other Asian countries such as Indonesia.

“In India, a lot of people chew paan — with or without tobacco. Many have it as a digestive after a meal as well. Our goal is to present paan as a dessert which you can take a sip of,” says the owners. 

The owners are currently looking into the prospects of patenting the wine, claiming to be the first in the country to make it. “We are looking at the legal side of things. Patenting a wine-making process is very challenging as it is similar to how any other wine is made,” says Akarsh. 

Currently, the Talisva Winery has a total production capacity of around 55,000 litres per year but is only producing around 20,000 litres. “We have sold a total of more than 600 bottles of the betel leaf wine since its launch last year,” says the CEO. 

The owners have plans beyond the wine trade. “Our main goal is to convert our 25 acre farm to an agro-tourism site. We want people to come here, enjoy the curated wines, taste the wines in progress in our labs, know more about the processes and so on,” they say.