Three cheers for enterprise

Sometime back, I had drawn a parallel between Alvin Toffler’s The Third Wave (1980) and wine in India. The pioneers (Indage, Grover, and Sula) had set up the “First Wave” of wineries in the years before a wine-friendly policy. The “Second Wave” of wineries followed the 2001 Maharashtra Grape Processing Policy — mostly grape farmers, with little understanding of sales and marketing. The “Third Wave” would consist of people with the means and ability to make good wine and market them in India and abroad.

Well, the Third Wave is here. There is a terrific lot of wines from new wineries in Maharashtra now becoming available, and while not cheap (remember the adage, “pay peanuts and you get monkeys”?), many of these wines are fully comparable to (if not better than) imported wines, and well worth a try.

I visited two very impressive new wineries in Nasik last week — Vallée de Vin, making Zampa wines, which celebrated its first crush with a thumping bash for 250 people last Sunday, and York Winery, marketing good-value wines under the “York” label.

Vallée de Vin is a 200-KL winery set up near Sanjegaon, off the Mumbai-Nasik road some 20 km short of Nasik, and promoted by Ravi Jain and Deepak Roy, both liquor industry veterans. The winery is at the base of a hill terraced with rows of wine grapes and has a lovely view looking out towards the Muknai Lake and the three peaks beyond. Their wines are marketed under the “Zampa” label — with an innovative logo that combines the vine leaf motif with an arabesque mask design. The wines have initially been sourced from the best local wineries, and include two whites (Sauvignon Blanc and Chenin Blanc), a Rosé, two reds (Syrah and Syrah Cab) and two sparkling “Soiree” wines (a Brut and a Brut Rosé), all priced at between Rs 650 and Rs 900 per bottle.

More impressive are the reserve wines, slowly maturing in imported oak casks, including a Tempranillo (red wine) from their own grapes — a first in Indian wines — that will be released only towards the end of the year. Their winemaker, Nick van Aarde, comes from South Africa with a world of experience — watch out for these wines.

York Winery is just down the road from Sula, also overlooking the Gangapur Lake, and their vineyards slope down towards the shores, providing a lovely ambience. Owner Ravi Gurnani is young, charismatic and has done a terrific job in setting up a world-class winery — the wines reflect this. Not surprisingly, the York Reserve Shiraz 2008 had bagged a gold medal at the Nov-09 Sommelier India Wine Competition. And while their wines are all the usual varietals, what is interesting is that they are all priced at about Rs 400 for the regular wines and Rs 600 for the reserves. Ravi firmly believes that wines are too expensive in India, and wants to give as low a price as is commercially feasible.

At last count Maharashtra had 67 operating wineries, so obviously there are many more wines to assess — the two above stand out in both the quality of their wines and the fact that their promoters have the ability to bring their wares more effectively to the consumer.

Makes one wonder whether there’s scope for a “Fourth Wave” — “Cuvee de Indee” perhaps? Cheers!

[The author is a Bangalore-based wine consultant]