Meditating Over A Bottle of Santo From Fratelli's Kapil Sekhri

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

I WAS pleasantly surprised to receive a wooden box from Fratelli Wines with a personal note from Kapil Sekhri, one of the six brothers behind the Akluj (Solapur)-based company, whom I had met most recently at the Panjim restaurant, Mum's Kitchen.

I am sure many others in the city must have got this gift. Still, I felt a strange sense of entitlement when I held Bottle No. 83 (out of a limited edition of 1,000) of Santo, Fratelli's dessert wine developed by Piero Masi, the acclaimed Tuscan winemaker. Masi is famous in his home country for ensuring, as winemaker, the celebrated Chianti Classico Casa Sola's rock-solid reputation. His own Fattoria dell’Agenda (100 per cent Cabernet Sauvignon) made history twice -- in 2004 and 2006 -- for selling out even before it was bottled.

Fratelli has produced just 1,000 numbered bottles
of Santo. Four kilos of Chenin Blanc grapes have
gone into each bottle of the flavourful dessert wine.

The creation of such an accomplished winemaker deserved my time and attention. I decided to taste it at once and write about it.

Santo pays homage to Vin Santo, the famous Tuscan dessert wine (the 'meditation wine') made in Chianti with the local white grapes, Trebbiano and Malvasia. It is Fratelli's first release in a 500-ml bottle, which is not very common in the wine world. It's a late harvest Chenin Blanc (like its forerunners from Sula, Reveilo and Big Banyan), which means the grapes that go into making it -- four kilos are said to have gone into my bottle -- are left on the vines for two months after the harvest season so that they shrivel and become almost like sugar-laden sultanas bursting with flavour.

These grapes are selected from plots that are not much exposed to the sun and have high humidity levels, which allow a slow yet intense process of concentration of flavours in the grapes, apart from much-needed acidity to balance the natural sweetness of Chenin Blanc. And as the wine ages for 24 months in French oak barrels, it develops the nutty and honey notes that I savoured as took my first sip. Santo acid levels effectively balances its sweetness, making it just perfect to be drunk by itself, or with cheese, or with western desserts (panna cotta is the first dessert that comes to my mind). The intense sweetness of Indian desserts rules them out for sweet wines of any kind.
Dessert wines, we are told by wine business insiders, don't have much of a market in India. With yet another addition to dessert wines from India, they may not gain volumes dramatically, but secure enough new ground to establish their niche in the wine universe.

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.