NO LONGER MEDIOCRE
In the vineyard as in the bottle, a trend is usually short lived, and wine as a fashion accessory, in my world view, should never exist. Here today, gone tomorrow; gold flakes, cobra blood, sea monkeys and all types of bling both in and on a bottle have been experimented with over the years and while some have endured, most have been mere fads, fleeting trends with a poor shelf life.
The use of a particular style of oak from that particular cooper, the variations of ferment temperature, barrel ferment or tank ferment, what trellising system to use, is purely personal for the winemaker and none is dictated by trends. These are a winemaker’s tools to coax the very best, nuanced varietal of wine. The greatest trend to occur in India’s relatively limited timeframe as a wine producing country has been the refinement of viticultural practices and an end result that’s superior and at par with what’s being produced in several wine regions across the world. Indian wine is on a fast train of development as it watches what the world is doing and tweaks accordingly.
The acceptance of Indian wine as a comparable alternative to her imported peers is growing today and we no longer see mediocrity being embraced by wine growers in the country. We see all those hallmarks of quality that we long thought were merely the preserve of foreign wines becoming more and more commonplace in wines from Akluj where Fratelli’s impressive 300-acre estate is situated, to Hampi Valley, and even Nashik, to other new regions. After conducting wine dinners/ tutorials and tastings all around the country with both domestic and imported wine, and in some cases with all bottles masked, I have come to the conclusion that Indian wine has finally come into its own and is being recognised as a force to reckon with. The once discernible difference between foreign and domestic wine is no longer so apparent, with Indian wines today often being mistaken for French or Italian and vice versa.
It is, in the end, our responsibility to not only push Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ‘Make in India’ cart forward, but to also believe, to have faith and find favour in modern Indian wine and the flourishing business it entails. The fact that Indian wine is here to stay is a no-brainer. One just has to look at the crores of investment being injected into this space to figure that this is one hot business with great potential for global growth. One just needs to pay close attention to refining the art of viticulture at home, and understand what’s going on in the vineyards around the country to give Indian wines the impetus they need to shine on a local and then global platform.
The once discernible difference between foreign and domestic wine is no longer so apparent