The vineyard, punctuated with lush clusters of purple grapes, is hemmed in by mountains. Tourists mill about, glasses in hand. But this isn’t Bordeaux, and the glasses are filled with grape juice.
Welcome to Cumbum, a small town in Tamil Nadu that brims with grape farms. Lately, vineyard tourism has picked up here. A Manoharan, who runs MSR Grapes Garden on the Kollam-Theni highway, says his vineyard receives nearly 1,000 visitors a day. Attributing the increase in footfall to the pandemic-induced suspension of international flights, he says a lot of domestic tourists now visit his 35-acre vineyard. “In the last year-and-a-half I have noticed a 30% increase in tourists from Tamil Nadu,” he says.
