Kebab Date of Chateau Margaux Heiress Revives Memories of Her Late Grandfather's India-Pakistan Connection

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

WHEN Alexandra Petit-Mentzelopoulos pairs kebabs with the wines of Chateau Margaux at The Taj Mahal Hotel on Saturday, April 19, she will, perhaps unknowingly, re-establish the old sub-continental connections of her entrepreneurial grandfather, who was responsible for turning around the fortunes of the Bordeaux First Growth.

Owner Corrine Mentzelopoulos and daughter,
Alexandra, who's in India, flank Chateau
Margaux's Managing Director, Paul Pontallier,
at the headquarters of the prestigious Bordeaux
First Growth wine house. On Saturday, April 19,
Alexandra will pair the wine with kebabs at a lunch
at The Taj Mahal Hotel, co-hosted by Delhi's
best-known wine connoisseur, Dhruv Sawhney,
CMD, Triveni Engineering, and the hotel's
General Manager, Satyajeet Krishnan. Image:
Courtesy of www.anthonyrosewine.com

Andre Mentzelopoulos, the son of a Greek peasant, moved to Burma towards the end of the 1930s, in the footsteps of his sister who had married a British Colonel of the Royal Indian Army, with the dream to make a fortune. For the rest of this most interesting story, let me paraphrase an account of Andre's life that I have read in the brilliantly informative website, A Good Nose (www.agoodnose.com).

The Japanese invasion of Burma in 1941 botched Andre's plans, so he set out for India through China to pick up the threads of his life. After Partition, fired by the dream of becoming an independent businessman, Andre, by now a fluent speaker of Urdu, moved to newly formed Pakistan, got into the cereal trade with Europe, and started making big bucks. Destiny, though, had other plans for him.

Andre returned to Europe, to Paris, in 1958 to be able to marry and live with Laura, Alexandra's maternal grandmother, whom he met and romanced on a skiing holiday in Switzerland. Laura was firm about not wanting to go to Pakistan. For Andre, it must have been a professional setback, for he was close to the Pakistani ruling class and was a good friend of the future Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto. Love prevailed and brought him to an unfamiliar country, where he bought and re-energised the Felix Potin chain of grocery stores; sired Alexandra's mother, Corinne, who is today without doubt the First Lady of Bordeaux; and bought Chateau Margaux in 1977.

The celebrated chateau, classified as a First Growth in 1855, and whose famous admirers included the American presidents Thomas Jefferson and Richard Nixon, was then in a state of terminal decline. The French government, in a fiercely nationalist move that saw a re-run when Vijay Mallya made a bid on Champagne Taittinger, had meanwhile blocked an American attempt to acquire Margaux. The Ginestet family that had owned Margaux since 1934 was in a precarious financial condition and the 1970s were a difficult decade for Bordeaux. Some might have considered the acquisition a foolhardy decision at that point in time, but it dramatically altered the fortunes of the Mentzelopoulos family.

Andre Mentzolupoulos brought on board the famous professor of oenology, Emile Peynaud, to put Margaux back on track. Bordeaux's wine guru invested his entire wealth of knowledge into ever stage of Margaux's, and its second wine Pavilion's, development, till 1990. It was his favourite child and he left his stamp of excellence on the wines that the chateau produced. But the man who gave Margaux its new lease of life passed away suddenly in 1980, when he was only 65. That was when his daughter Corinne, Alexandra's mother, came into the business and together with her mother, Laura, she went about systematically to restore Margaux's old glory, befitting a member of that exclusive club of the five First Growths.

Corinne, who is said to exude Mediterranean warmth, studied Classical Literature as an undergraduate student, went on to get a Master's in Political Science and worked with a leading advertising agency, Havas, before joining Felix Potin. It was his unexpected death, though, that brought her to Margaux, with which she had previously very little to do.

She reconstructed the winery's aging and decrepit cellars and fortuitously, when the process was complete, Bordeaux got one of its most memorable vintages: 1982. It was a great year to announce that Margaux was back in the reckoning. The next year, Margaux got a new estate manager, an erudite young man named Paul Pontallier, to replace the aging Philippe Barre. Corinne and Paul, who is now the managing director of the company, rewrote the Margaux story -- she with her sharp business sense and he with his oenological competence -- and it has seen celebrities as diverse as the U.S. basketball star Michael Jordan and former Chinese President Hu Jintao visit the chateau to partake of its history and its superlative wines.

In 1993, to reduce the burden of managing a thriving business single-handedly, Corinne got the Agnelli family, which owned Fiat, to acquire a 75 per cent controlling stake in Margaux. When in 2003, the Agnellis announced that they were preparing to sell that stake, Corinne bought it back and reclaimed the legacy that her family has been jealously guarding since 1977. It is into this tradition that Alexandra, the youngest of Corinne's three children, was inducted in the autumn 2012.

Margaux is certainly not the first First Growth to make a serious attempt to pair with Indian cuisine. Wine snobs may shudder at the thought, but some years back, at the initiative of Frederic Engerer, President of Chateau Latour, the venerable First Growth hosted Hemant Oberoi, Grand Master Chef of the Taj Group, to perfect the match between Indian food and the fine wines of Bordeaux. Will Margaux and kebabs make a good match on Saturday? Watch this space to find out all about it.

As Wasabi By Morimoto Turns 5 in New Delhi, Grand Master Hemant Oberoi Shares His Inspirations

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

A MEETING with Grand Master Chef Hemant Oberoi can only mean an explosion of new ideas. As we waited for journalists and bloggers to trickle in for the media lunch organised to celebrate the fifth anniversary of Wasabi by Morimoto at The Taj Mahal Hotel, New Delhi, he had me riveted by recalling how he, on his flight back from Davos, where he had catered for the World Economic Forum, had conjured up an idea to transform a party that was being hosted at the Taj Mumbai.

"I think best when I am on a flight," Oberoi said. It was a last-minute change of plans and, naturally, it sent his team into a state of tizzy, but imagine going to a party with 50 live counters, each with an LCD screen running a film on the ingredient being cooked at the counter! Or going to a counter and seeing the meats or vegetables of your choice being grilled under the coal-fired contraption that's been used for ages to iron clothes!

(From left) Wasabi by Morimoto Manager
Malvika Sahay, Executive Chef Amit Chowdhury,
Grand Master Chef Hemant Oberoi, and
General Manager, The Taj Mahal Hotel,
New Delhi, Satyajeet Krishnan, pose with the
new menu of the restaurant that has turned five

Oberoi got these coal-fired irons from Dhobighat and they served his purpose well by perfectly grilling the meats or vegetables, which were packed in parchment paper, at 80 degrees  Celsius. Needless to say, Taj Mumbai made a lot of money out of this party, only going to show that there are people who are ready to pay for a special experience.

On Wasabi by Morimoto turning five in New Delhi, Oberoi said how he has celebrated fifth to 40th anniversaries of iconic Taj restaurants. One of the Shamiana, at Taj Mumbai, turned 40 last year and the chef, who started his career at the restaurant when another famous Taj executive, Subir Bhowmick, was its manager, decided to put some of the old favourites back on the menu, all priced at an unbelievable Rs 40 each for a day. The response to this offer was phenomenal. The queue of people craving for a meal at Shamiana stretched up to Prince of Wales Museum -- that day, 800 people at the restaurant and more than 100 kilos of spaghetti got cooked, and the kitchen worked non-stop for 14 hours, but the goodwill and publicity that the move generated was worth several crores of business.

The Crispy Onion Cup in Morel Soup is a
testament to Wasabi by Morimoto's
commitment to adding quality
vegetarian items on the menu

The same magic was evident in the lunch menu laid out for the media at Wasabi by Morimoto, New Delhi. Oberoi, who said he hoped the restaurant too would complete 40 years, emphasised that the Wasabi by Morimoto team is working very hard to develop a vegetarian menu that could stand up to the competition from the non-vegetarian best-sellers. "Seven out of India's ten richest families are vegetarian," Oberoi pointed out to reveal the business brain beneath his chef's hat!

The Avocado Tartare, the Bell Pepper and Crispy Asparagus Sushi Rolls, the Crispy Onion Cup in Morel Soup, and the Eggplant Aka Miso (aka miso, incidentally, is the longer fermented red miso) proved Oberoi's point. Wasabi by Morimoto now has vegetarian dishes in its new menu that have progressed much beyond the restaurant's signature edamame.

Among the non-vegetarian items, my personal discoveries were the as-soft-as-butter lamb chop in black shichimi (seven-flavour chilli powder) and morel sauce and the Ghost Tenderloin Sukiyaki, which arrived on a bed of potato mash and garlic soy. The tenderloin slices had white candy floss on top, which melted away when the jus was poured on it. That is the 'ghost' that figures in the name of the dish. And of course, there was the top-selling Black Cod Miso, but with a difference. It is less sweet, and therefore tastes even better, because the fish is now cured in the traditional Japanese way -- first in a bed of salt and then for three days under a muslin cloth dripping with miso. With such innovative tweaks, Wasabi by Morimoto can never go out of fashion -- and it will certainly go on to celebrate its 40th anniversary.

FORTUNE COOKIE: Meet the Man Who Invented Tuna Pizza

This column first appeared in the Mail Today edition dated December 19, 2013. Copyright: Mail Today Newspapers. If you wish to see the original page, please click on the link given here and then go to Page 17.
http://epaper.mailtoday.in/epaperhome.aspx?issue=19122013

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

Masaharu Morimoto strikes a pose
with his sashimi knives at Wasabi,
his signature restaurant at the Taj
Mahal Hotel, New Delhi.

A COUPLE of months back, Ankur Chawla, ex-Taj staffer and author of 14 Hours, a gripping first-person account of the 26/11 terror attacks, was remembering Masaharu Morimoto from the pre-opening days of Wasabi, the Japanese-American chef's signature restaurant at the Taj Mahal Hotel in New Delhi. Chawla said he was taken by surprise to see an internationally renowned chef with a ponytail moving around anonymously in a T-shirt, shorts and sneakers.

So, you can imagine my surprise when I sat down to interview Morimoto, looking just the way Chawla had described him, shielded by a neat pile of tempting petit fours on the layered dish that hoteliers call a 'charlie'. I started by asking him if he remembered his 'acolyte' Akira Back, the Korean-American who has just opened his eponymous restaurant at the J.W. Marriott in the Aerocity, and that was enough to draw the normally reserved chef into an animated conversation.

He said he had not seen Akira Back till he went to dine at his restaurant Yellowtail in Las Vegas and that the chef-restaurateur who insists he's Morimoto's protege is not the inventor of the tuna pizza. Of course, he said with an impish smile, he did not mind being flattered by imitators. "I am not a celebrity, but the media has made me into one," Morimoto declared, adding that now it seemed all he had to do was "just talk, talk, talk".

Well, he shouldn't be complaining about being a celebrity, for he owes his worldwide fame to the Fuji TV reality show, Iron Chef, and its U.S. spinoff, Iron Chef America. A shoulder injury had made Morimoto opt out of Major League baseball and start training as a sushi and kaiseki (Japanese haute cuisine) chef, before he got to own a restaurant in Hiroshima. He first wanted to go to America, to cash in on what he now calls the "sushi boom", during the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984. He had to postpone his plan by a year because he took that long to find a buyer for his restaurant. When he finally left for the U.S. in 1985, he had with him "the cheapest" round-trip ticket and his flight from Hiroshima to New York had three stopovers -- Osaka, Seoul and Anchorage. He had booked a round-trip ticket because he was certain he would have to go back home, but he never got to use it for the return flight.

After working at different restaurants in his adopted city, the as-yet-unknown chef took charge of the Japanese kitchen at the Sony Club, which was the private dining room of top directors of the Sony Corporation, and was hired by Nobu Matsuhisa, the man who's synonymous with modern Japanese cuisine, to open the first Nobu in New York as executive chef in 1994.

Having worked and trained under the master, Morimoto launched his own restaurant in Philadelphia in 2001. It became as famous for its Japanese cuisine with western touches as for its exuberant decor. "Food is only 30 per cent," Morimoto said to me, underlining the salience of "design, decor, music, atmosphere," and then quickly added the caveat: "But it is my 100 per cent. I can't control your mood, but I can make the taste of my food change it."

I asked him about his invention, tuna pizza, or why he calls sashimi, carpaccio on the menu, and he said, "I have made the entrance wider for people who were not aware of Japanese food. I want to bring the customer to my cuisine." Morimoto is a gifted chef with a sharp eye on business and the talent to manage talent, which, I guess, is the only way you can run multiple restaurants. "I am like a conductor of a symphony," Morimoto said, making gestures to show a conductor wielding his baton. "I manage different skills and talents."

He said that before a chef joins a Morimoto restaurant, he or she has to spend three weeks at either Philadelphia or New York. Before opening any restaurant, he trains the chefs personally for a month and only after he's satisfied with their work, he allows the ribbon-cutting. "I have good chefs in each restaurant," he said in reply to my question on being able to maintain consistency across his many establishments.

Since 2001, awards, accolades and new restaurant openings have been Morimoto's constant companions. Morimoto opened Wasabi at the Taj Mahal Palace & Tower in Mumbai when it was still early days for his restaurant empire, which now stretches from Philly to Hawaii, via Napa Valley and Tokyo, but the move worked.

The challenge was to maintain a consistent supply line for ingredients. "The important thing was how and from where to source fresh fish for the Indian market," Morimoto said, adding that he has managed the issue with his suppliers in Japan. The other departure for him was a menu that is 50 per cent vegetarian, but a creative chef finds his way around every speed-breaker. Morimoto created the corn tempura, for instance, as an alternative to his best-selling rock shrimp tempura. He has mastered the art of catering to the local palate. All he insists is that his ten signatures must be on the menu of each of the Morimoto restaurants. I asked him in what ways is Mumbai is different from Delhi. In Mumbai, Morimoto said, people have money, so they spend on good food; in Delhi, people travel, so they seek out the food they had on their last vacation.

Morimoto is a great believer in the TPO (Time Place Occasion) theory. You've got to be at the right time, at the right place, with the right product. There's more, though, to the success of Morimoto, and who can say it better than he? "If we have been successful, it is not because we are lucky," he said. "The timing of our entry may have been right, but we also have done a good job." People who've dined at Wasabi, although the meal may have set them back substantially, would agree with the Iron Chef.

COOKBOOK FROM THE CHEF TO WORLD LEADERS

HEMANT OBEROI can justifiably claim to have logged more frequent flyer miles than any other Indian chef. His celebrity status dates back to the late 1990s, when he first attracted media notice with his Californian Indian (Cal-Indian) cuisine topped by the famous 'naanzza' (naan baked like a pizza with butter chicken sauce, mozzarella and tandoori chicken).

Fame comes at a price -- in Oberoi's case, it has meant he lives out of airports, hotels and suitcases on most days of the year as he goes around the world serving heads of state and showcasing Indian food at international festivals. In return, the Ferozepur-born corporate chef of Taj Hotels has had the privilege of getting Bill Clinton to eat dahi vada at the Ambani residence and of inspiring the former Conservative prime minister of Great Britain, John Major, to depart from state banquet protocol and asking for a second helping.

With so many anecdotes to share (many of which he'll have to carry with him to his afterlife), and so much to offer to cookery enthusiasts, I had always wondered why Oberoi hadn't put his recipes, including those of his modernist interpretations of traditional Indian dishes, together in one book. Arvind Saraswat, another Taj veteran, did it before him, but his work, The Gourmet Indian Cookbook, where he floated the idea of fruit-based sauces, did not find many takers. Oberoi has finally taken the plunge and he unveiled The Masala Art: Indian Haute Cuisine (Roli Books) last week at the Taj Palace restaurant after which the book is named.

My first take-away from the book was Oberoi's long working day. How does a man manage to look so happy and not seem to age when he reports for work at 9 a.m. and calls it a day at 11:30 p.m., which is the time he reaches home and  goes to bed after having his customary cup of tea. What I like about the recipes is that though they come with a twist (Beetroot Lassi, Lemongrass Rasam, Crab Samosas and Masala Chai Kulfi, for instance), and the dishes look like works of art, they are easy to follow by hobby cooks who wish to add a dash of zing to their family meals or wow their guests at a family meal.

COINTREAU'S GENERATION 6

IT IS a privilege to be born with a surname revered in 165 countries and a fixture in the recipes of more than 300 cocktails. Alfred Cointreau represents the sixth generation of a drink that was born when Edouard Cointreau (not to be confused with the man who founded the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards) perfected the recipe for it in 1875. Unsurprisingly, Alfred, 26, who believes in travelling out of his home city, Angers in the Loire Valley, after every two weeks, is passionate about his official role: Cointreau Heritage Manager. He showed it on his recent visit to New Delhi, where he was a star at the popular speakeasy, PCO at Vasant Vihar.

"At the beginning you have an orange peel and at the end the 'heart'," Alfred said, describing the production process of Cointreau. The orange liqueur, or triple sec, depends entirely on what Alfred calls the "perfect balance" of the four ingredients -- sweet and bitter peels sourced from Brazil, Ghana, Haiti and Spain, and selected by the master distiller, Bernadette Langleis; alcohol derived from beetroots; and sugar. Peels of three oranges go into each bottle of Cointreau (and 15 million of them are produced every year) and these are macerated in alcohol and water for six months before sugar is added during the distillation process. It's amazing how the world's best things have the simplest origins.

TULLY NATION

MY personal dial-an-encyclopaedia for the pleasures of life that come in liquid form, Vikram Achanta of Tulleeho.com, astounded me the other day by pointing out Great Britain drinks three times more beer than India. The poms deserve the suffix 'Great'! Imagine a nation of 63 million people outperforming one with a population of 1.25 billion by three to one!

Now that I have entertained you with useless information, do follow Achanta's lead and order a 'In the Rocks' at The Aviary, the highly acclaimed Chicago cocktail lounge and restaurant of the famous Grant Achatz (of Alinea fame) and Nick Kokonas. This cocktail is not served on the rocks; instead, it comes in a sphere made with ice. Ice is so important on The Aviary's menu that it has an ice chef, entrusted with the job of devising newer ways to use ice in unheard-of ways!

Taj's Grand Master, Hemant Oberoi, Unveils his First Book and a Tempting New Menu at Masala Art

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

ONE OF the biggest mistakes The Oberoi group made was not to hire Hemant Oberoi. He was asked to tweak his surname because there could be only one Oberoi in the group. The young man destined to become the country's most accomplished chef of his generation refused to relent. Instead, he joined the Taj, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Hemant Oberoi, Corporate Chef, Taj
Hotels, unwinds at Masala Art, the
restaurant he created 12 years ago at
the Taj Palace in New Delhi. This
picture has been taken by Hoihnu
Hauzel, journalist and food writer.

I met the Corporate Chef of the Taj Hotels at Masala Art, where he was celebrating the launch of his debut book, The Masala Art: Indian Haute Cuisine (Roli Books), 12 years after the restaurant, one of his three famous babies, opened at the Taj Palace in New Delhi and revolutionised the way people looked at our country's gastronomic heritage. It made good old-fashioned ganne ka ras (sugarcane juice) sexy. It gave a new spin to the everyday phulka by getting it made a la minute on a trolley by the table. It introduced the fashion of cooking in olive oil and pairing kebabs and curries with wine. Its menu carried art by Paresh Maity and Prabhakar Kolte, and on its walls hung the works of Jitish Kallat -- that was when nobody knew him. It did away with live ghazals in favour of contemporary piped music.

In other words, it did what no Indian restaurant had dared to do before. Since Masala Art, as Oberoi said with his characteristic blunt wit, there have been many CCPs (cut, copy and paste restaurants), but the original has stood its ground and spread to Mumbai -- Masala Kraft at the Taj Mahal Palace & Tower and the more seafood-driven Masala Bay at Taj Land's End -- as well as Bangalore in the avatar of Masala Klub.

Oberoi subsequently developed two stellar new concepts -- Blue Ginger, the country's first Vietnamese restaurant (first in Bangalore and then in Delhi), and thereafter Varq at the Taj Mahal Hotel, New Delhi, which introduced the city to Oberoi's Indian take on haute cuisine -- but Masala Art remains his most definitive contribution. It is only appropriate therefore that he has chosen to name his first book after the restaurant.

"What next?" I asked the grand master. "Wait till next year," he replied. "I am presenting a concept that I have been working on for seven years. The restaurant will be the first of its kind in India." Oberoi did not elaborate, but he did rev up my imagination.

The first thing that struck me as I leafed through the lavishly illustrated book is the work schedule he still follows. He may have served presidents and prime ministers (in fact, if he writes a book on the dignitaries he has fed, it will be a runaway best-seller), but his working day still stretches from 9 in the morning to 11:30 at night, when he returns home to a cup of tea. It reminded me of the early days of Masala Art.

In the course of an interview, I asked him whether he ever gets family time. He narrated a very funny story. He said that people he knew described their growing children in terms of their height, but he could only talk about his two sons in terms of their length, because he always saw them sleeping. It's surprising that the two boys have followed in their father's footsteps, but they must have been fired by the awards and accolades he has earned in his crowded life.

That was also the time when the then prime minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, insisted on taking Oberoi around the world so that he could showcase the best of Indian cuisine in official banquets. I asked Oberoi how it was to live out of travel bags, hotel rooms and airport lounges. He said he works on restaurant concepts on flights because he gets uncluttered time only when he's flying! Unsurprisingly, he doesn't let his mind rest even after he launches a new restaurant.

At Masala Art, for instance, he has launched a new menu, which is more national in character. It has beauties such as the broccoli and kaffir lime shorba, crab masaledar (or peppered edamame for the vegetarians) in filo, balchao seabass, bhatti ke asparagus, haleemi gilawati (a refreshing departure from the standard gilawati kebab), ghee roast chicken (Oberoi has retrieved an original recipe of this favourite dish of Aishwarya Rai's community, the Bunts of Kundapura in Karnataka's famed Udupi district, dating back to the 19th century), bharwan guchchi with malai ki sabzi (stuffed king-size morels with a curry made with cream), and an amazing gajar ka halwa filo cigar with rabdi, fresh strawberry elaneer payasam and malt kulfi, which must rank as one of the chef's most striking innovations.

His proverbial rabbits from the magician's hat, though, were the see-through glass mini-handis for the dum ki biryani, which the renowned German glassware makers, Schott Zwiesel, took two years to develop. Oberoi's brief to them was that they should produce a glass handi so that each portion of biryani is cooked individually in the oven and the chefs are able to see it rise. It takes a grand master to visualise a product that turns a meal into a gastronomic journey.

FORTUNE COOKIE: Max India Boss Analjit Singh Says Cheers to South African Wine

This column first appeared in the 7 November 2013 edition of Mail Today. Copyright: Mail Today Newspapers.

Log on to http://epaper.mailtoday.in/epaperhome.aspx?issue=7112013 and go to Page 15

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

A COUPLE OF fortnights back, I had written about the discovery of Masterchef South Africa finalist Guy Clark by Max India chairman, Analjit Singh (current worth: $705 million, estimated by Forbes.com), which culminated in the opening of Uzuri Deck & Dining at M-Block Market, Greater Kailash-II. The multi-millionaire has now sent ripples across the wine world by buying into one of South Africa's youngest and much-acclaimed wineries, Mullineux Family Wines.

Singh's "complete love affair" with South Africa, as we are informed by the wine writer Tim James (http://grape.co.za), started with his maiden trip to that country during the 2010 FIFA World Cup, thanks to his soccer-obsessed son. It was then that he discovered Franschhoek, an exclusive enclave near Cape Town established by the French Huguenots in 1688, and now famous for its wineries as well as award-winning restaurants (including Le Quartier Francaise, which was ranked 36th in the San Pellegrino Top 50 Restaurants of the World in 2011). He bought a mansion house, the Dassenberg Farm, in that exclusive neighbourhood and James writes that it is being re-landscaped in a major way.

Max India Chairman Analjit
Singh has invested in the young
and acclaimed Mullineux Family
Wines in South Africa owned by
Chris and Andrea Mullineux

Mullineux Family Wines was established in 2007 by a young accountant-turned-winemaker Chris Mullineux and his American wife Andrea, a graduate of the famous viticulture and oenology programme of the University of California-Davis -- they had met, as you'd expect from a wine fairytale, in Champagne and instantly fell in love. They started the company with investments from the British serial entrepreneur and philanthropist Keith Prothero, who had made his money in the finance business in Hong Kong, and accountant Peter Dart.

Within a short time, Mullineux acquired a stellar reputation with its portfolio of wines (three with the coveted five-star rating) produced in the granite- and shale-based terroir of the Swartland, a young and tiny wine region 50km north of Cape Town that was previously famous for being the home of South Africa's oldest colonial hotel, The Royal at Riebeek Kasteel. The viticulturist Rosa Kruger, one of South Africa's great "wine innovators" (to quote FT's celebrated columnist Jancis Robinson) and fairy godmother to the Young Turks of her country's blossoming wine industry, introduced Singh to the Mullineux couple.

For Singh, who's seriously looking at bigger forays into food, wine and hospitality, to mastermind which he has appointed Hector de Galard to Max India, it seemed like just the kind of match he would love to seal. An opportunity presented itself when Prothero, who has also financed the London fine wine store, The Sampler, and is funding a charity working for the welfare of South African children afflicted by the foetal alcohol syndrome, announced that he would like to sell his stake in the business. Singh's Leeu International Investments Limited ('Leeu' is the Afrikaans word for 'lion', or Singh!) picked up this stake, making him the first major Indian investor in an important South African wine company.

Last fortnight, I had written about Hindustan Construction Company's Ajit Gulabchand and his massive investment in Nashik's Charosa winery. If Indian investors of the stature of Analjit Singh and Ajit Gulabchand pump money into the wine business, whether in India or around the world, then the profile of the country's wine market will transform dramatically. What the country's wine business desperately needs is an infusion of corporate culture into its daily operations to help it rise above its infantile presence. It will definitely help the country's wine producers to stop behaving like small farmers and make common cause to grow the market, and also get the government to start taking the business seriously. At the moment, the Indian Grape Processing Board is a joke dominated by small-time farmer-producers led by officials who essentially use the organisation to collect frequent flier miles by organising study trips around wine-making countries. People like Analjit Singh can change the face of this unorganised business.

NO GAMBLING AT DRY & VEGGIE BANGKOK DIWALI DOS

I WAS in Bangkok on Diwali eve, on an assignment for one of my many current employers, and I was struck by the sight of women brightly dressed in the Indo-Thai style accompanied by plainly clothed men with flat white turbans and flowing beards zipping into the porch of the busy Sheraton Grande on Sukhumvit Road in their sport cars, conversing with each other in the Thai language as spoken by the locals. They lent colour and buzz to the lobby of the busy hotel.

I found out that they were members of Bangkok's Namdhari Sikh families, which are at the forefront of local businesses, and Diwali-eve parties are occasions for them to bond. For the hotel, which is owned by an old Punjabi business family settled in Thailand, these parties mean good business. And the seriousness with which it takes this business is apparent from the presence of an Indian chef, Janmejoy Sen (formerly of The Imperial New Delhi), catering especially to the social calendar of the Thai capital's vibrant Punjabi community.

Unlike Delhi's Diwali parties, where high stakes rule the gambling tables, single malts and Barolos get flashed, and an array of exotic dishes (from fondues to anda paranthas, which were hugely popular at a party hosted by a builder-hotelier this past weekend), the ones in Bangkok are strictly dry and vegetarian, and gambling is a big no-no. Namdharis (or Kukas), who constitute 60-70 per cent of the Thai population of Indian origin, are vegetarian and teetotallers. Their code of simple living forbids them to gamble and explains the everyday nature of the simple clothes worn by the men. I am told the non-Namdhari Punjabis aren't bound by such considerations, but thankfully, they haven't imported the culture of gambling.

The Diwali-eve party that I got a glimpse of was a tasteful affair. The hotel's event planner had got the venue decorated with Thai silks and flower arrangements, an old-fashioned band was in attendance with a pianist playing old Hindi film numbers and contemporary Thai tunes, and the food spread was a delight. From vegetarian sushi and quesadilla, to khao suey, pad thai and pastas cooked live, to Vietnamese kanom baung yuan (coconut rice pancakes), to matar paneer, naan and pedas, it looked as if the kitchens of the world had come home to roost at this Diwali-eve party. You can take Indians out of India, but you can't take India out of them!

COOKING UP A STORM IN THE DESERT

THE Bollywood stars who attended Nita Ambani's 50th birthday, and the 55 private jets that ferried them and the other celebrities and captains of industry who attended the celebrations in Jodhpur, may have cornered media mind space, but who were the chefs who kept the country's A-List eating out of their hands?

As you'd expect from an event of this class, super chef Hemant Oberoi of the Taj Group presided over the Umaid Bhawan Palace dinner where the best dishes of the hotel chain's top restaurants, from Blue Ginger to Wasabi, were showcased. At the Bal Samand Palace high tea followed by dinner, Manish Mehrotra of Indian Accent rolled out his signature phulka tacos, but the fillings were strictly vegetarian, and six designer chaats, including dahi batata poori with wasabi peas and caramelised onion kachoris served with blue cheese sauce.

The equally inventive Abhijit Saha, the chef-restaurateur behind Bangalore's Caperberry, served molecular gastronomy canapes and desserts carrying his creative imprint. The surprise of that evening, though, was a caterer from Surat named Tapan Choksi. He laid out a wow Gujarati spread that his mother, who's in her 70s and very close to Kokilaben Ambani, personally got made over two days. She made sure the dinner turned out to be a wow experience that the privileged guests wouldn't forget in a hurry.

RIP: CHARLIE TROTTER, 1959-2013

WHEN I woke up to Sabyasachi 'Saby' Gorai's Facebook post on what Charlie Trotter meant to him and other young chefs of his generation, I got a sense of the vast circle of influence of the Chicago chef-restaurateur who passed away on November 5. Trotter was 54 when he died, which only compounds the loss, for the man who read Political Science at the University of Wisconsin, talked management (Businessweek brilliantly describes him as a 'Master Chef with a McKinsey Mind'), took foie gras off the menu in 2002, and was one of the most revered chefs of his age, could have shaped at least a couple of more generations. Aspiring chefs have devoured his books, his restaurants have won a procession of honours, but we'll always remember him for his famous line from his cameo role in My Best Friend's Wedding: "I will kill your whole family if you don't get this right!"