Marks & Spencer Selects Sula's Jewel of Nasik Trio As First Indian Wines On Its Portfolio

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

JUST A couple of days back, Sameer Sain, Managing Partner of the Indian and South-East Asian private equity fund, Everstone Capital, was quoted by The Times of India waxing ecstatic about Sula Vineyards Founder-CEO, Rajeev Samant, after exiting Nashik Vintners, the wine brand's parent company, with Rs 114 crore on an investment of Rs 37 crore made in August 2007.

"Nashik Vintners and brand Sula under Rajeev Samant's leadership has seen unprecedented success over the last several years," Sain said. Sula's revenue vaulted by more than 500 per cent over the last few years, even as the company maintained healthy operating profits. Sain also reminded the newspapers readers that Sula's distribution footprint now covers over 400 cities spanning across 23 states in the country.

Add Britain's top retailer, Marks & Spencer, to this formidable footprint and Samant has a good reason to pop open a bubbly. M&S has decided to sell Sula's three Jewel of Nasik wines -- Sauvignon Blanc, Zinfandel Rose and Tempranillo Shiraz -- priced at £6.99 a bottle and sporting a colourful label at 250 stores across the UK. It's a significant milestone for the company, which straddles 70 per cent of the country's wine market and exports its products to 25 countries, and for the country, because it gives Indian wine an enviable international platform that can only lift its reputation across the world. The UK, incidentally, is Sula's biggest market outside India.

Interestingly, the Marks & Spencer announcement came days after Samant presented a candid assessment of the country's wine market, balancing the opportunities with the Himalayan challenges, at the Eighth International Symposium organised by the Institute of Masters of Wine in Florence on May 15-18.

And of course, it's raining good news for Samant, with the Nashik Vintners now being valued at Rs 700 crore, after the Belgian family office Verlinvest, Anil Ambani's Reliance Capital and VisVires India Wineries have jointly acquired Rs 275 crore stake in the company. According to The Times of India, Reliance Capital and VisVires India Wineries -- the latter owned by Singapore- based Ravi Vishwanatan -- will now hold a 29 per cent stake in the company. Verlinvest, a Belgian family office belonging to the founders of beer giant Anheuser Busch InBev, will increase its stake to 23 per cent.

Commenting on the Marks & Spencer decision, Samant could not hide his excitement. “It is a proud day for us and for Indian wines and reflects the broader surge in the acceptance of our wines in this most competitive market," he said in a media statement. "Nasik, the region that we founded, is on its way to becoming a world-renowned wine region," he added.

Emma Dawson, Marks & Spencer’s Wine Buyer, joined the celebrations by stating: "We are very excited about offering customers our very first Indian wines. We’ve created these wines to be suitable to drink as an aperitif or in styles that match well with Indian food." Well, it's time for all Indian wine lovers to raise a toast to the country's wine leader.

Sula Opens China Account as Sales in UK, Germany & Sri Lanka Head North; Expected Listing on World Airline A First

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

Rajeev Samant, Founder-CEO,
Sula Vineyards, is in the enviable
position of steering a brand that
is in demand internationally

CHINESE products may be flooding the Indian market, but there's one Indian brand that has just planted the Tricolour on Chinese soil. Earlier in the week, the first shipment of Sula wines reached Guangzhou (the city formerly known as Shanghai), marking the entry of the country's top-selling wine brand into the world's largest red wine-consuming market.

Sula's distributor in China is Justwine, which is also the country's biggest buyer of Chateau Lafite, the Bordeaux First Growth wine owned by members of the Rothschild family since the 19th century. Interestingly, Justwine's COO is an Indian, Vikas Gupta, who referred to Sula in glowing terms in a press statement issued in May.

"Chinese customers and local wine critics loved the Sauvignon Blanc and Shiraz immensely," Gupta had said, "and they could not believe that Sula is just a 13-year-old winery with such brilliant quality. We are proud to introduce Sula Vineyards to this market and are certain that a unique brand will be appreciated." Justwine's portfolio has more than 1,000 top international labels.

Outlining Sula's international forays, Cecilia Oldine, Global Brand Ambassador and Head of International Sales, Sula Vineyards, said in an interview with me in New Delhi that there's been a sudden burst of interest in the brand in the international market. "We used to sell 3,000 cases a year to Germany," Oldine said, "but now we export 1,000 cases a month. We get an inquiry or an order almost daily."

Oldine shared that the world's largest luxury travel retail operator, DFS, has added Sula to its wine and spirits lineup at its store located in the departure lounge of the Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport in Mumbai. "We share counter space with Dom," Oldine proudly said, adding, without elaborating, that Sula wines were very close to being served on the flights of a leading international airline. That would clearly be a first for an Indian wine.

Sula is expected to complete this financial year with a production figure of 650,000 nine-litre cases (or 7.8 million bottles) of wine daily, a rising percentage of which is being exported to more than 20 countries. Since 2013, Sula has sold 400 cases each of its Nasika Sauvignon Blanc, which is fast turning out to be its most popular wine internationally, and Zinfandel in the UK market through Direct Wines, the world's largest direct-to-customers wine sales website. Amazon UK is another international sales platform for Sula's expanding portfolio.

Sri Lanka is another market Sula is betting on. Oldine attributes Sula's rising sales to the growing interest of international tourists visiting the island nation. "World travellers invariably wish to have a local wine when they are on a vacation," she said. "And India is the wine-producing country that is closest to Sri Lanka." If geographical proximity helps Sula in Sri Lanka, in the Middle East, it's the support the brand gets from Indian F&B decision-makers, who, unlike their counterparts back home, are big backers of wines from their mother country.

Oldine said consistent quality has been responsible for driving Sula's sales up north, which explains why the company, in recent years, has been ramping up its capacity by one million litres a year. Wine tastings (1,600 of them in 2013-14) and winery tours (Sula has hosted 170,000 visitors in this financial year) have also ensured Sula's pole position, besides making wine tourism one of the company's key business verticals. "Each person who visits our winery or attends a tasting becomes our informal brand ambassador," says Oldine. Unsurprisingly, Sula's problem is that of plenty, which is an enviable position to be in.

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"?

Remy Sula's 100% Indian Grape Spirit Brandy Ready for Release; Awaits Remy Cointreau's Green Signal

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

INDIA'S first brandy made 100 per cent with grape spirit is ready for release. It is the baby of Remy Sula, a joint venture between the Paris-based ninth largest spirits company in the world, Remy Cointreau, and Nashik's Sula Vineyards, the producer of India's largest selling wines, which is led by the Standford-trained engineer and wine pioneer Rajeev Samant.

Remy Cointreau, headed by industry veteran Rukn Luthra in India, is famous for its cognac Remy Martin (and the ultra-exclusive Louis XIII) as well as the champagnes Piper-Heidsieck and Charles Heidsieck, the mid-market brandies St Remy and Metaxa, and the triple sec, Cointreau. The brandy, whose grapes are being sourced locally, is being produced at Century Wines, Baramati, under Remy Sula's supervision.

Sources close to the development say the brandy will be released only after Remy Cointreau's experts give its their thumb. The other whisper is that the company is lobbying for an excise duty reduction on grape spirit in view of the high cost of production.

The next time you visit Sula Vineyards, you may
be able to ask for a snifter of brandy -- made
100 per cent with Indian grape spirit. Image:
Courtesy of Virgin Atlantic blog

In India, brandies made by multiple local players have a minuscule quantity of grape spirit; the basic ingredient is extra neutral alcohol (ENA) produced out of molasses, which, in fact, is at the core of most Indian-manufactured spirits, starting with whisky. Media reports peg the price of ENA at Rs 20 per litre; that of grape spirit is Rs 400 per litre. It's seriously expensive to produce brandy with grape spirit, which is why the Remy Sula product may be deserving of excise duty exemption.

The Remy Sula partnership was first off the ground when the Government of Maharashtra allowed the production of grape spirit some time back to insulate farmers from the economic setback they suffer in the years when they have excess production. Wine grapes have no other use. The demand for grape spirit therefore may provide farmers an incentive to step up their production levels.

The launch of Remy Sula's first Indian grape spirit-based brandy will mark the entry of yet another important international player in the domestic wine and spirits market. Seagram India, the local arm of the French alcobev multinational, Pernod Ricard, set the ball rolling with its Nine Hills wines made in Nashik, and Moet Hennessy India most recently launched its Indian sparkling wine, Chandon, in Mumbai and Delhi to lend some sparkle to the jaded market.

Brandy, incidentally, is big business in the south, which consumed 99 per cent (Tamil Nadu alone cornered 60 per cent) of the 45-plus million, nine-litre cases of the drink released into the market in 2012. That's a substantially bigger market than wine. Remy Sula, it's apparent, wishes to gain the first-mover advantage with an Indian brandy that is produced just the way it is supposed to be. The move will give the alcobev industry an additional push to achieve higher production levels and penetrate the domestic market deeper than ever.

At India's Woodstock, A Soul-Stirring Offering of Food, Wine and Music

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

SULAFEST, without doubt, is India's Woodstock. A celebration of youth power. A showcase of good wine, food and pop fashion. A music programme packed with the best of electronica and world music. A crowd that deserves to be held up as a model of self-discipline.

When the late lamented Chateau Indage pioneered grape stomping as a marketing gimmick to glam up the wine business, wine snobs would turn their noses up and just about tolerate the publicity that the Chateau got as a result of it. No one then could imagine that the tradition would get a life of its own and grow into a cultural festival under the leadership of Rajeev Samant of Sula Wines, the Chateau's challenger and nemesis.

Sula put Nashik on the world wine map after Samant, with help from his Californian winemaker, Kerry Damsky, changed the face of a district that was previously famous for having Asia's largest wholesale onion market. Today, Sula has 238 contract farmers, supervised by a team viticulturists, growing 17 varieties of wine grapes, some of which, such as Pinot Noir (at a place named Sangvi near Pune), were considered impossible to sustain in India. In the same way, Sulafest has ensured the district's place on the tourist map -- it's a pity that the event lasts just for two days.

When you have a 20-artiste lineup with Dub Pistols, The Dualists, Vasuda Sharma, Susheela Raman and DJ Anna leading the pack, you know Sulafest 2014 is a "gourmet music festival" not to be taken lightly. There's food for every taste bud -- from shawarma and kaukswe at the Food Court next to the Main Stage to piping hot and deliciously juicy kathi rolls at the Electrozone, which has a very different vibe and music that just sucks you in. It grows on you, especially after you've had a blueFROG bottle filled up with a heady vodka and watermelon juice combo (Rs 800). You can also have a Mount Gay rum mojito (highly recommended at Rs 300), or a shot of Grant's, or an Asahi beer, or any Sula wine that catches your fancy. If you wish to take some home, my good friend, Rinku Madan, who's presiding over the Club Sula stall, will take your order and have your choice shipped to your home.

Now in its seventh year, Sulafest has put Nashik
on the world tourism map and become
India's No. 1 gourmet music festival.
Image: Courtesy of blueFrog

Or you can grab a preservatives-free, sparkling fruit juice (Rs 100) -- apple, pink guava or passionfruit, take your pick -- from Pune's Good Juicery, which was launched last year by a South African resident of the city, Michelle Bauer, and her food technologist friend Julia Madlener. I was talking to Michelle's friend, a New Zealander named Brendan (not McCullum!), and he said the company insists on sourcing its fruits from India (each can of Good has 40 per cent fruit juice). Passionfruit is an exception, naturally, but Brendan surprised me by saying that the company has zeroed in on a vendor in Kerala. Imagine having passionfruit from Kerala! It reminded me of what celebrity chef Vikas Khanna said to me some time back: "There's nothing that isn't grown or eaten in India." Of course, he wasn't talking about fruits, but octopus cooked Keralan style!

I was lucky to catch up with Ajoy Shaw, Sula's talented and forever happy winemaker. He treated me to a Rasa 2007, a 100 per cent Shiraz, which still has maintained its ruby red hue bordering on purple, its luscious tannins slithering down my thirsty throat. Sula is re-launching Rasa 2007 as a Collector's Edition wine. Shaw said it was a pity Sula couldn't hold back stocks of its top-end wines -- my favourite, Dindori Reserve Shiraz, being one of them -- for later release. The demand for Sula wines invariably shoots ahead of the supply.

I asked Shaw about his preparations for the tough-as-nails Master of Wine examination. He said he wakes up sometimes at 3:30 in the morning to prepare for it, because he has full-time job to do. The process is expensive. It requires extensive wine tasting opportunities, which are not easy to come by in India, unlike, say, in London, where you have such events every week. And there's a lot of emphasis put on your English writing skills, which a biochemist such as Shaw may at times find challenging. I had heard the same story from Sonal Holland of ITC at the Chandon launch in Mumbai. But something tells me, both will eventually become India's first Masters of Wine.

Sulafest is not only about food, wine and music. It's also about conversations and memories that remain with you for a long time after the curtains have come down on the event.

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/

TASTING NOTES: India Gets First Sparkling Wines with French Pedigree from Moet Hennessy

Moet Hennessy's Regional Managing
Director Mark Bedingham with a bottle
of the Chandon Brut at the launch of
the sparkler at the Four Seasons
Mumbai on October 20.

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

I HAVE just come back to my 18th-floor room at the Four Seasons Mumbai from a sneak preview tasting of the Chandon Brut and Rose, Moet Hennessy India’s debut methode traditionelle sparkling wines from Nashik, convinced that the country has a future as a serious producer of bubbles made with wine grapes and not Thompson seedless.

The Brut (Maharashtra MRP: Rs 1,200) arrived with a rush of playful little bubbles — the first visible sign of a good sparkling wine — and it effortlessly balanced crispy acidity with citrusy notes, without really letting its 10gm/litre residual sugar (high by French standards) over-express itself. So, if you’re looking for a Prosecco equivalent, this is not the one. The residual sugar (a result, predictably, of the 84 per cent presence of Chenin Blanc, which is not one of the grapes you’d associate with a methode traditionelle sparkling wine) was present in the background, but only to soften the acid attack. And just in case you’ve been wondering about it, Chardonnay and Pinot Noir are the other two grape varieties that have contributed the remaining 16 per cent of wholesome sparkler that lasts longs on the palate.

The balance was stunning and I felt honoured to be drinking the sparkler with its maker, Kelly Healy, a New Zealander who has been making sparkling wine for the past 17 years. It is just the kind of bubbly I would serve friends before a lazy, conversation-laden Sunday lunch, where I would order in Mini Mughal’s smoky, juicy butter chicken, and open the Rose (Maharashtra MRP: Rs 1,400) when people settle down to eat.

This is the first genuine Rose sparkling wine I have had in India — its competitors, I am afraid, taste like turpentine. It seamlessly marries the fruitiness of Shiraz with the structure of Pinot Noir to titillate your palate and draw out best feelings. This is just the sparkling wine you’d have with wholesome (but not chilli hot) rarha mutton or even the kosha mangsho of the Bengalis. Dal Makhni and Shahi Paneer are the vegetarian dishes that I can see getting along famously with the bubbly.

As we tasting the sparklers, I asked Mark Bedingham, Regional Managing Director, Moet & Hennessy Asia-Pacific about the difference Chandon will make to the wine drinking culture in the country. For those who can’t afford the price points of champagne, Bedingham said, Chandon offers “affordable luxury”. He said the sparklers had been made to “reach out to a whole bunch of new customers”, especially “the rising young professional class”.

Its custodians expect it to open up the market, at present very limited for sparkling wine, which have a 3-5 per cent market share in the country — naturally, because champagne has never been seriously appreciated; it has either been flaunted or reserved for consumption on festive occasions. “Emerging lifestyles in India are sympathetic to the consumption of sparkling wines,” Bedingham said.

The Chandon Brut is 84 per cent Chenin Blanc and
8 per cent each of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. The
Rose is 90 per cent Shiraz and 10 per cent Pinot Noir,
which has become Nashik's varietal to look out for. 

The Chandon sparkling wines are now being produced and bottled at the Nashik-based York Winery, but Moet Hennessy India is all set to open its own winery at Dindori, a taluka with perfect soil for wine grapes that was first put on the country’s wine map by Rajeev Samant, the man behind the humongous success of Sula Vineyards. “We are here to be the pioneers for the highest quality of Indian wines,” Bedingham assured me as I couldn’t stop admiring the Rose. The tasting session convinced me that he wasn’t overstating his company’s case.

A SPARKLING NIGHT: The Chandon sparklers were launched on October 19 at a glittering party with the chatterati in full attendance, who, in true Mumbai style, sashayed in only after midnight. From the glamorous writer Shobhaa De, who looked younger than her daughter, to industrialist Gautam Singhania and actor Arjun Rampal, the city’s A-List partied hard till the wee hours to the heart-pumping music of the deejay, who had been flown in for the day from Paris.

The wine world was there too — from Rajeev Samant, who was a force to reckon with on the dance floor, and Ashwin Deo, a former managing director of Moet Hennessy India who has now his own wine label, Turning Point, to Sonal Holland of ITC Hotels, who, I learnt, is one of four Indians to get the WSET-IV certificate, which is quite a creditable achievement, to Indian Wine Academy President Subhash Arora, Sommelier India founder-editor Reva Singh, Business Standard columnist Alok Chandra, and celebrated wine trainer and writer Magandeep Singh.

I was most happy to meet Ian Morden, the estate director of Cloudy Bay, a jewel in the Moet Hennessy crown. A South African whose warmth is so natural and welcoming, Morden was the one who was given the charge of initiating the Chandon project five years ago. He still remembers how his first port of call was Sula, where Samant floored him with his hospitality. Maybe that gave Moet Hennessy the confidence to launch Chandon.