FORTUNE COOKIE: Sula Vineyards to Serve a Slice of Goa at its Destination Winery

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

I FIRST went to Nashik, India's wine country, about a decade ago and spent a couple of nights at what was then Sula Vineyards founder-CEO Rajeev Samant's home in the winery he had launched with the promise to put what he described as "our own Napa Valley" on the world wine map.

Goa's most famous shack restaurant, La Plage

(above), opens this Sunday in a gaily colourful

setting at Sula Vineyards, Nashik, giving wine

tourism in India a fashionable new direction

It was in the middle of a blazing summer, but as soon as the evening would set in, a rejuvenating cool breeze swept the leaves off the courtyard and brought the mercury down by a good number of notches. That was the signal for the cook to bring out my favourite Dindori Shiraz, a hearty red that turned out to be a match made in heaven for his Kolhapuri chicken. I used to wonder then if Nashik's newbie wineries such as Sula would be able to capitalise on their location in the lap of nine lone hills of the Sahyadris and make wine tourism a viable business vertical in what was till then an industrial town whose only other claim to fame was (and will forever be) its proximity to Shirdi, hometown of the original Sai Baba.

A decade later, Samant, a Stanford graduate who did a stint at Oracle, has not only made Sula the country's top wine brand straddling 70 per cent of the market, but also turned Nashik into a premier wine tourism destination. His old house has made way for a boutique hotel and last year, Sula's vineyards drew over 170,000 visitors from all over the world. It was a model that Vijay Mallya's Four Seasons wines sought to replicate in a picture-perfect Italian villa at Baramati (Sharad Pawar's bastion in the backyard of Pune) till the company's financial troubles got the better of the project. Fratelli, a successful new wine player, has also been doing something similar, though on a more modest scale, at its state-of-the-art winery in Akluj, the old cotton trade outpost in Maharashtra's Solapur district.

Sula, however, continues to be the leader in this new business, and now, by teaming up with a Goan institution, the celebrated French restaurant La Plage, it has taken wine tourism to a serious new level. For Samant, getting La Plage (whose restaurant at Sula Vineyards, which opens on Sunday, July 6, is called Soleil) to Nashik was "a big thing personally" because, as he explained to me, his second home, which is in Goa, is just behind the restaurant on Ashwem Beach in Morjim.

Imagine savouring a glass of Sula's
award-winning Shiraz, Rasa, even as you
soak in the verdant scenery of vineyards
in the shadow of the Sahyadri hills!

La Plage, which literally means 'the beach', is a stylish shack restaurant, which was launched in 2002 as a humble six-table establishment serving breakfast and lunch. Its founding trio -- Morgan Rainforth, a Welsh-French national who had studied cookery in Provence and had had enough of working with temperamental French chefs; his girlfriend Florence Tarbouriech, whom he met in Barcelona; and her long-time friend Serge Lozano -- fell in love with Goa on a backpacking visit and decided to stay on by doing what they knew best: running a restaurant. It turned out to be a gastronomic coup and very soon, celebrities from Amitabh Bachchan to Jeremy Irons and Kate Moss joined La Plage's growing fan following, savouring the French fare that Rainforth dished up with remarkable consistency.

International acclaim has been pouring in on Rainforth and his mates, like Goa's monsoon showers, and though the thatch-roofed restaurant, guarded by palms bent by centuries of sea breeze, stays shut from April to November, its loyalists show up without fail as soon as it opens for its unbeatable chicken liver pate with onion jam and the Thali au Chocolat. Well-known for being a ceaseless innovator, Rainforest surprises his guests with the tasteful simplicity of dishes such as fillets of tuna, served rare and encrusted with sesame seeds, and drizzled with a sweet-tangy soy sauce; or calamari stuffed with ratatouille; or the sardine filets with wasabi cream. Just the kind of food that'll make you yearn for a bottle of wine.

SWISS SCOOPS WARM UP ICE-CREAM MARKET

Movenpick has arrived in Delhi
with new global flavours such as
the popular crème brûlée (above)

AT RS 175 A SCOOP, Mövenpick is the second international premium ice-cream brand to enter Delhi (at the Select Citywalk, Saket) after Haagen Dasz, which despite its "Danish-sounding" name (a tribute to the treatment of Jews in Denmark during World War II) was born in Bronx, New York. Mövenpick is Swiss, the brainchild of a restaurateur named Ueli Prager, who opened his first outlet in Zurich in 1948, and the name he gave it is now famous as the ice-cream brand.

The restaurant became famous for the unusual ice-cream flavours on its menu, and as its outlets opened across Switzerland, the brand Mövenpick was born, but only after its takeover by Nestle in 2003 did it spread internationally.

 Boston University MBA Tarun Sikka
is the premium ice-cream brand's
national franchisee

Mövenpick first arrived in India in 2008, but the going wasn't good and its operations were wound down. With a young franchisee, Boston University MBA Tarun Sikka, driving it now, the ice-cream brand entered the country from Chennai and Delhi is its second pit stop. Bangalore and Mumbai are the cities next on its growth trajectory, and Sikka is confident, "without being over-ambitious", that he'll be able to cater to the niche market that Movenpick serves. "Do you know Movenpick is the top-selling ice-cream brand in Bangladesh?" Sikka declares triumphantly, adding that it's already on the menu of 30 hotels across India, including the Taj in Delhi and Grand Hyatt in Mumbai.

What I find refreshing about Mövenpick ice-creams is their unusual range of flavours -- crème brûlée is my personal favourite and I believe its masala chai variant is an international fast mover. The ice-creams are without artificial preservatives or flavourings, yet they are produced in such a way that their shelf life is 18 months; the sorbets hold good for a year. Each season, Mövenpick releases two sets of ice-cream: 16 flavours are fixed and another seven or eight are from its 'experimental' range, but what sets each one of them apart is the flavour intensity provided by the six or seven layers of the base ingredient in each scoop. There's a reason why good taste comes at a price.

NO CELEBRATION FOR OLD MONK AS IT FUMBLES IN YOUNG MARKET

ONE of the most anticipated rankings in the business of beverages is the global wine and spirits consultancy IWSR's Real 100 List, which stacks up local brews that are more powerful than most international best-sellers.

The old market leader has been left way behind
by United Spirits Limited's Celebration rum,
the world's No. 9 alcoholic beverage

This year's Top Ten List has two pieces of news relevant to our market. One is that Officer's Choice, which grew by nearly 5.5 million nine-litre cases in 2013, surpassing McDowell's No. 1, is officially the world's largest-selling whisky at 24.16 million cases. Across beverage categories, the two are at Nos. 5 and 6, compared with Johnnie Walker's No. 8 (19.28 million cases).

The second news, and this is a shocker, is that Mohan Meakin's Old Monk, for long the country's top-selling  Indian Made Foreign Liquor brand and the world No. 2 rum after Bacardi, has officially been relegated into a far corner by another United Spirits Limited (USL) heavy-hitter, Celebration, which reached 18.9 million cases (and the No. 9 position) in 2013. For those of us who've lost our alcoholic virginity with Old Monk, it's sad to see its sorry decline because of bad marketing and lousy distribution. Mohan Meakin's geriatric leadership doesn't seem to realise that nostalgia alone doesn't get the cash registers ringing.

KOREA'S JINRO SOJU IS THE WORLD'S NO. 1 ALCOBEV

WHAT makes Jinro special? For starters, it is the world's most consumed alcoholic beverage brand, it is produced in South Korea, and it sold 65.66 million nine-litre cases in 2013, according the global wine and spirits consultancy IWSR's authoritative Real 100 List. Jinro has been in the business of making soju, the Korean cousin of vodka, since 1924 and it was acquired by Hite, the manufacturer of Korea's largest-selling beer, in 2008. What's interesting about Jinro is that its label tells you whether it's being served to you at the right temperature. Each bottle comes with a temperature-sensitive paper tab in the shape of a frog, the company's label. It is white when the bottle is warm, but turns blue when it is cold and drinkable. Cool, isn't it?

This column first appeared in the Mail Today edition dated July 3, 2014.

Copyright: Mail Today Newspapers

Fratelli’s Sette VII Only Silver Lining for India at Decanter Asian Wine Awards 2013

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

Steven Spurrier (above) and Jeannie
Cho Lee, Asia's first Master of Wine,
co-charied the Decanter Asian Wine
Awards 2013 panel of 44 experts  

IT HAPPENS to the best of Indian restaurants — they never make it to any respectable rank on any global ‘best list’. Indian wines, too, seem to be suffering from a similar crisis of acceptance.

Indian wines — 16 of them — cut a sorry figure at the Decanter Asian Wine Awards (DAWA) 2013, whose results were officially released in Hong Kong on October 23. In a competition where a Japanese entry, Grace Winery’s 2012 Gris de Koshu, won a gold medal and regional trophy for its white wine made 100 per cent with Japan’s signature Koshu grapes,  the Indians landed with one silver, nine bronze and four ‘commended’ medals.

The country’s pride was somewhat salvaged by Sette VII, the brilliant Sangiovese-Cabernet Sauvignon blend developed by the celebrated Italian winemaker, Piero Masi, at the Fratelli winery at Akluj in Maharashtra’s Solapur district. Last year, when the first DAWA was held in Hong Kong, the Sauvignon Blanc 2012 of Sula Vineyards returned home with a silver.

To console themselves, Indian winemakers can draw solace from the performance of their Chinese counterparts, though on an Olympic-style medals tally China would rank higher than India because of its two silvers. Of the 36 Chinese entries, only one-half got a medal — two got silver, five bronzes and 11 ‘commended’ medals.

If this seems to you to be somewhat like India’s performance in the Olympics, rest assured you are not over-reacting. For starters, at DAWA, unlike in the Olympics, just about every competitor gets a medal. This year, 44 experts from across the world, including Indian Wine Academy President Subhash Arora, judged more than 2,300 entries and gave away prizes to 2,023 of them (it seems like the tally of votes that used to be cast in elections in the old Soviet Union — 99.99 per cent for the ruling dictator, making you wonder what happened to the remaining 0.01 per cent!). Of the 2,023 award winners, 39 got a regional trophy, 45 gold medals, 369 silvers, 985 bronzes and 585 ‘commended’ medals.

As you can deduce from these numbers, getting a bronze or a ‘commended’ medal is not the same as practising rocket science. A major source of revenue of competitions such as DAWA 2013 is the amount each participating winery pays for each wine entered in the competition. It is therefore in the best interests of the organisers to send all but a very few of the entries — these must be really undrinkable wines — back home with a medal, which explains the deluge of metal in the wine competition.

Co-chaired by Jeannie Cho Lee, the first Asian Master of Wine and a contributing editor to Decanter, the English-speaking world’s most authoritative wine magazine published from London and circulated in 92 countries, and Steven Spurrier, Chairman, Decanter World Wine Awards, and the magazine’s consultant editor, judging took place in Hong Kong on 16-19 September 2013. Sarah Kemp, Publishing Director, Decanter, said in a media release, “All wines were tasted blind and judged by a panel of Asia’s finest palates, and only those which represent outstanding quality are endorsed with a Decanter Asia Wine Award medal.” The Decanter World Wine Awards, incidentally, are the most prestigious in their category.

The competition leader, without doubt, was Australia, which participated with 614 entries and scooped up 18 gold medals and 11 regional trophies. Australia had done well in the Decanter World Wine Awards as well. In Europe, Italy’s Veneto area bagged four regional trophies and four gold medals from 84 entries. The surprise of the event was, to quote Decanter.com, a “revitalized” Languedoc-Roussillon (France), which went home with two regional trophies from 59 entries, compared with just one from 88 entries for Bordeaux.

“In today’s wine world, particularly in Asia, nothing, not even historical reputations, can be taken for granted,” noted Spurrier, writing on DAWA 2013 in his column for the Decanter magazine’s upcoming December issue. The task for Indian winemakers is a little more difficult. They have to build their reputation before they can stake claim to history.

To know more about DAWA 2013, go to:

http://www.decanter.com/news/wine-news/584469/dawa-2013-results-japan-claims-first-decanter-regional-trophy and http://dawa.decanterchina.com/en/2013/

Connoisseurs Vote for Mixed Bag of Winners in Blind Tasting of Indian Wines

By Sourish Bhattacharyya
THE WESTIN at Koregaon Park, Pune, took a bold leap of faith and organised an event called Wines of India this past Sunday to showcase the increasing diversity emerging out of the country’s vineyards. It was a bold leap of faith because our starred hotels treat Indian wines the way they used to dismiss the country’s culinary wealth with utter disdain. It’s almost as if they are embarrassed to operate in a country that also produces wine!

Grover Zampa Vineyards COO Sumedh Singh
Mandla (left) with Subhash Arora, President,
Indian Wine Academy, at the Wines of India
event at The Westin, Koregaon Park, Pune
(Picture: Courtesy of Subhash Arora)

Just like Indian restaurants used to get the worst locations in a starred hotel and tandoors were kept only for making breads and a few standard kebabs, till ITC changed the rules of the game with Bukhara at the Maurya in the 1980s, Indian labels are put right at the end of wine lists, as if our hotels are afraid of owning up to the fact that India also produces wines. Indian wines are not even kept in rooms for guests entitled to the freebie.

It was commendable therefore to see The Westin get wine producers from Maharashtra and Karnataka together at Koregaon Park, Pune, a neighbourhood that has always been associated with an evolved lifestyle, maybe because of its proximity to the Osho Ashram. And when I saw my good friend, Indian Wine Academy President Subhash Arora, head straight to Pune after flying in from Hong Kong, I knew it was an event that was being taken with utmost seriousness by our wine luminaries.

Those invited (about 150 experts and connoisseurs from across the country) to this first-of-its-kind event to be organised by a starred hotel got busy doing some serious blind tasting and rating the wines they were served during the course of the day. In the evening, the same wines were served at a networking dinner where the who’s who of Pune showed up. The wineries that participated in the event were: Sula, Fratelli, Grover Zampa, Four Seasons, Nine Hills, Reveilo, Kiara, Turning Point, Vallonné and York. “We believe that wineries in India today produce some of the world’s best wines,” said Vikas Malik, Regional Director (Food & Beverage), South Asia, Starwood Asia Pacific Hotels & Resorts. “These go very well with the Indian palate and international travellers are also trying out local wines,” Malik added.

Subhash commented later on my Facebook wall that “the methodology left much to be desired. … Winners will make a mistake hanging the results on their walls.” Being a veteran of 35-odd international wine competitions, Subhash may not approve of the idea of a whole lot of people, moving from one counter to another, tasting and judging wines on the rather basic criteria of taste, colour, look and after appeal.

My take on the event is that it was the closest we have come to involving consumers in the exercise of judging the wines they would like to drink. Unless people take ownership of what they consume, we’ll never have a robust wine drinking culture. To quote Dilip Puri, Managing Director (India) and Regional Vice President (South Asia), Starwood Asia Pacific Hotels & Resorts: “Wine tasting sessions are very popular internationally and considering the growing wine market in India, this was a great opportunity to showcase the best wines produced within the country at one common platform and gather feedback that will help us enhance our wine offering to our guests.”

The blind tasting results, based on the scores given by the invitees, are out. What I loved about the list of winners and runners-up is that it spills over with surprises, which means no company has attempted to influence the outcome. The spokesperson for The Westin, Koregaon Park, Pune, said the winner wines will be promoted in the hotel for the next three months and if the feedback is good, the event may be repeated in other Starwood hotels as well (The Westin is one of the brands that Starwood operates).

I am sharing the list. Remember, it’s the 2013 vintage, so the reds may still be a bit rough on the edges. A lot of the wines may also not be available in your city, but when you’re out travelling, especially to Mumbai, you can always buy the wine you’re missing.

The winners are:

Chardonnay: Reveilo Chardonnay Reserve (W); Reveilo Chardonnay (R)

Chenin Blanc: Nine Hills Chenin Blanc (W); Reveilo Chenin Blanc (R)

Sauvignon Blanc: Fratelli Sauvignon Blanc (W); Sula Sauvignon Blanc (R)

Sparkling: Zampa Soiree Brut (W); Zampa Soiree Rose Brut (R)

Dessert Wine: Sula Late Harvest Chenin Blanc (W); York Late Harvest Chenin Blanc (R)

Merlot: Vallonné Merlot Reserve (W); Fratelli Merlot (R)

Shiraz: Turning Point Shiraz (W); Sula Rasa Shiraz (R)

Cabernet Sauvignon: Reveilo Cabernet Sauvignon (W); York Cabernet Sauvignon (R)

Cabernet Blend: Grover La Reserva (W); Turning Point Shiraz Cabernet (R)

Rosé: Nine Hills Rosé (W); Vallonné Rosé (R)

Fratelli Releases Rarest of Rare White Wine to Test Its Creative Quotient

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

THE WORDS ‘Sangiovese Bianco’ made me sit up and read the media release from Fratelli, a homegrown company with Italian ties and a wine portfolio that has found a growing band of loyal followers.

‘Sangiovese Bianco’, clearly, is an oxymoron. The name Sangiovese, which is used to describe the Italian workhorse grapes of a deep purple hue that are used to make Brunello di Montalcino, Super Tuscans and even the delicious dessert wine Vin Santo, is derived from the Latin root words sanguis and Jovis, which when combined mean ‘the blood of Jove’, the king of gods (or the Roman Indra). The name obviously has something to do with the colour of the deep red wine with hints of purple.

Now, isn’t making a white Sangiovese a waste of the grapes that go into it? The question comes immediately to one’s mind, especially after tasting the Sette 2010, an opulent blend of Sangiovese and Cabernet Sauvignon, which has all the hallmarks of the genius of Piero Masi, Tuscany’s master winemaker. But when you know the wine is from Fratelli, with Masi’s stamp on it, you have to sit up and take notice.

Masi, after all, has 40 years of winemaking experience behind him and he has brought them bear on the 60,000 Sangiovese vines that are being nurtured in Fratelli’s vineyards at Akluj in Maharashtra’s Solapur district, 170km south of the prosperous western city of Pune. And Fratelli (www.fratelliwines.in) has successfully powered the Indian equivalent of the Cal-Ital movement, which is what Californian winemakers, many of whom are of Italian ancestry, flagged off when they started to experiment with Italian grape varieties, starting with Sangiovese.

All grape juice is white. It’s extended contact with grape skins that imparts colour to red wine; when this contact is controlled, the result is a rose or a blush wine. To produce Sangiovese Bianco, according to the Fratelli media release, an innovation has been put in place to rule out any contact between the juice and grape skins. The MRP for the wine is Rs 695 in Maharashtra and Rs 850 in Delhi.

Masi, unsurprisingly, is ecstatic. “Typically grown on sandy and rocky soils, the Sangiovese grapes are strategically planted to avoid overexposure to the sun,” he is quoted as saying in the media release. “Such practice imparts delicate yet refined aromas of coconut and bougainvilleas. On the palate, hints of vanilla and violets along with a light body characterise this rare white wine. Fratelli has truly created an exceptional wine.”

The tasting notes convey a similar upbeat sentiment. “Floral and apple notes,” the tasting notes read. “It’s acidic and fresh but has a smooth and creamy body. In the summer, it will taste great with grilled fish, seafood, chicken and greens or pasta salads. In the winter, it will taste amazing with a mixed green salad of romaine, arugula, herbs and gorgonzola cheese, as well as grilled fish, seafood and chicken.”

You need to be brave to produce a rarest of rare white wine. Fratelli has shown it has got that something that you must have to take the market by storm.