Sulafest Has Shown the Way for Others to Follow and Harvest the Gains

This article first appeared on Indian Wine Academy's website (www.indianwineacademy.com) on Feb. 11. Reprinted with permission. Click on http://www.indianwineacademy.com/item_4_589.aspx to see it in the original format.

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

Susheela Raman was one of the major world
music stars who performed at Sulafest 2014.
India's premier gourmet music event is a model
for others to follow to give the wine culture
a big thrust forward.

THERE was a time when sponsoring wine dinners was the only option available to wine producers and importers to make inroads into a society wedded to brown spirits. Thanks to the pioneering efforts of people like the late Ghulam Naqshband and our own Subhash Arora, whose Delhi Wine Club events have become launch pads for wines and restaurants that believe in the wine culture, and some five-star hotels as well as passionate restaurateurs such as AD Singh, Rahul Akerkar, Ritu Dalmia, Abhijit Saha and Tarsillo Natalone, wine dinners became an essential part of the social calendar of our big cities.

As they evolve, wine dinners have started attracting the same crowd and most of the regulars are on the wrong side of the age curve -- it's a market with not more than 10 to 20 years of longevity left. Organising a wine dinner is like preaching to the converted. If the wine market has to grow, the country's vast young population -- 70 per cent of India is below the age of 35 -- must be introduced to the heady joys of the wonderful world of wine. But this important market segment seems to regard formal wine occasions to be too stuffy, too 'grey', to merit any place in its crowded life. How does the industry win this vodka-and-white-rum-toting generation over to its side of the circle of pleasure?

Seven years ago, Rajeev Samant of Sula Vineyards, who's always one step ahead of the competition, hit upon a brilliant idea. It was called Sulafest -- a weekend in February dedicated to the pleasures of wine, food and music; "a gourmet wine festival". There couldn't be a headier mix, and soon, all roads were leading to Nashik, the headquarters of the country's top wine producer. And the pilgrims on this road less travelled were precisely from the generation that considered wine to be oh-so yesterday.

The idea wasn't entirely an original Samant brainwave. The inspiration came from the grape-stomping dramas that Chateau Indage would organise every year, with Mumbai's who's who in attendance, till the company went bust. But what Samant has done is give it a spin -- and every year, Sulafest has been growing, not only in the number and quality of music acts it hosts, but also in the turnout and fashion statements that the visitor flaunt. It is India's Woodstock with shades of Ascot.

I bumped into Samant at the VIP Lounge and, after admiring his orange shorts and exchanging notes on the political temperature in Delhi, asked him about the turnout at Sulafest 2014. "I have stopped counting," he said with a broad grin. I could see the sense of triumph in his looks. He deserved his moment in the sun.

For the past two years, Sulafest has tied up with the country's leading purveyor of world music, blueFROG, which is why homegrown artistes such as Susheela Raman, Vasuda Sharma and Avial performed to capacity audiences along with the British psychedelic music group Shpongle, the toast of this year's fest; the ska/reggae band from Croydon, The Dualers; rumba-meets-raga group Gypsy All Stars; dub music and big beat band Dub Pistols; and the Italian from London, Gaudi, who's one of the busiest solo performers in the electronica world. And then there were pleasant surprises such as singer-songwriter-guitarist Gowri, who held her own and kept her audience asking for more, despite the deafening boom-boom-boom emanating from the 'Electro Zone'.

The 'Electro Zone' was rocked by some of the trendiest names in EDM -- the Brazilian export DJ Anna; the multi-cultural exponent of psychedelic trance, Ma Faiza; the Russian DJs who have a cult following in Goa, Mescaluto (Victoria) and Sashanti (Alexander Sukhochev); and the desi boy Ankytrixx (Ankit Kocher). It was an eclectic mix of music, which was being canned by VH1 for future broadcasts, and with Vero Moda, the trendy international women's fashion brand, being the lead sponsor, floral colours and youthful style were in evidence everywhere. The food was just the kind that the young love -- from momos to shawarma, from rajma-chawal to egg/kebab rolls, washed down with Mount Gay mojitos, or Asahi beer, or the sparkling fruit drinks from Pune-based Good Juicery, the baby of former Cape Town resident Michelle Bauer and her food technologist friend Julia Madlener.

There was food and drink everywhere, but no one got drunk or misbehaved, and the hundreds of young women could do exactly what they wanted to do, without any man paying more-than-usual attention to even the shortest skirt. It was clean, unalloyed fun, and people minded their own business. I wonder how many people signed up for camping at the vineyards organised by LetsCampOut.com, which was surely a first for an Indian "gourmet music" event.

Seeing the scores of young people who had signed up for the winery tour and tastings, asking questions, sipping wines and excitedly shooting selfies, Ajoy Shaw, Chief Winemaker and Vice President, Sula Vineyards, said, "This is the market we must reach out to if we have to grow." We were at Sula's Tasting Room, drinking Rasa 2007, a delicately balanced Shiraz with still some years of life left.

Shaw, a Bengali who is proud to call himself a Maharashtrian (his parents brought him to the state when he was five months old), said at least 600 people, mostly in their late 20s and early 30s, show up every weekend at Sula for guided tours, wine tastings and gorging on the food served at two vineyard restaurants (Soma and Little Italy). They go back with bottles of wine and a sense of excitement about the wine culture. They become the ambassadors of wine.

We need more clones of Sulafest -- in Akluj, in Baramati, in Charosa, in Hampi, in the Nandi Hills -- if we wish to create new gourmet tourist destinations and get more people hooked on to the joys of wine. What is the point of producing increasingly better wines if the market moves at what used to be once called the "Hindu rate of growth"?

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!"

India’s First Ritz Carlton Opens with Michelin-Starred Anupam Banerjee as Executive Chef

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

BANGALORE and Bengal are powered by two entirely different mindsets, but our own Silicon Valley’s culinary scene has been dominated for years by a Bengali. Abhijit Saha grew up in Delhi, studied Hotel Management at IHM Pusa and Oenology at the Johnson and Wales University, USA, started out as an industrial trainee at the Taj Palace in his home city, earned his spurs at The Park, where he launched IT.alia in Bangalore with guidance from the famous Antonio Carluccio, and then has had his adopted city eating out of his hand at Caperberry (and subsequently Fava).

Now, there’s another probashi (expat) Bengali chef who’s set to storm Bangalore’s culinary scene as executive chef steering the seven restaurants with which the country’s first Ritz Carlton has opened in the southern city. Anupam Banerjee, who grew up in Ranchi, where his mother is a professor of economics and his father an engineer, was the head chef of Rasoi by Vineet at the Mandarin Oriental Geneva when it became the first and only Indian restaurant in Continental Europe to get a Michelin star and 15 points on the GaultMillau.

Banerjee’s ties with the Michelin-starred chef-restaurateur Vineet Bhatia, the force behind Rasoi, goes back to their days at The Oberoi. When the Mandarin Oriental Geneva chose to open with the Indian restaurant in 2008, Banerjee naturally was the hotel’s first choice for the position of head chef. Banerjee, who turns 40 next years, has spent nine years with the Mandarin Oriental, having worked at the group’s hotel at Hyde Park, a favourite of Indian fat cats, and in Washington, D.C., where he was head chef before he got his Bangalore assignment — or, to use the famous Ritz Carlton expression, was inducted as one of the “Ladies and Gentlemen serving Ladies and Gentlemen”.

An IHM Chennai graduate, Banerjee completed his education at the Oberoi Centre for Learning and Development (OCLD) and worked at La Rochelle, where he honed his French culinary skills, before it made way for threesixty degrees at The Oberoi New Delhi. When he was 25, he won a cooking competition for chefs at The Oberoi and was chosen to represent the hotel at a ‘Taste of Asia’ promotion in Singapore.

Ranchi's Anupam Banerjee (do you see a resemblance here
with M.S. Dhoni?) is the Executive Chef of India's first
Ritz Carlton in Bangalore. Image: Courtesy of Destination
MO, online magazine of the Mandarin Oriental group

It was there that he was spotted by a chef from The Raffles and was inducted into the historic hotel, where he also met his Singapore-Chinese wife Fung. In the two years he spent as stand-in chef at The Raffles, he got to work in all of the hotel’s 18 restaurants, which prepared him for bigger roles at the Mandarin Oriental. Banerjee has also worked with Alain Soliveres at his Michelin two-star restaurant in Hotel Vernet, Paris, had a short stint with Pierre Gagnaire at his Michelin three-star restaurant, also in Paris, and worked alongside with Charlie Trotters, Jeun Fleury and Lea Linster.

A world-travelled chef who has lived and worked in three continents, Banerjee comes with an impressive CV and a heavy load of expectations on his shoulders. The Ritz Carlton Bangalore will have three specialty restaurants — The Market, an all-day dining destination where the main highlight will be the chef’s table where Banerjee will showcase his culinary repertoire; The Lantern, a lantern-shaped Chinese restaurant and bar designed by Super Potato; Riwaz, a Bukhara-type North West Frontier restaurant with a whisky and wine room; and Bang, an open-air rooftop bar offering panoramic views of the city from the 15th floor. That’s an impressive inventory to command, but Banerjee has the experience to slip into his role seamlessly.