Wine education

THE WINE CLUB

Drinking wine is easy: just pour, tilt the wineglass, and sip! Appreciating the stuff is more difficult: One needs to get to know about grape characteristics, terroir, colour, "legs", aroma, taste, aftertaste, complexity, vintages et cetera et cetera "" in short, all the arcane knowledge which some wine buffs use to intimidate the less fortunate (or less stuck-up) and which genuine aficionados seem to have at their fingertips.

So where/how to get to know more about wine? The Internet is a pretty good place to start "" just Google the subject and there's a wealth of information available. Wikipedia has some of the most authoritative articles and links to useful websites; winedoctor and wineanorak provide good general knowledge, while comparative prices and ratings are given on sites like winesearcher or winespectator.

Of course there's no substitute for actually trying the stuff, and there's a woeful dearth of sites on Indian wines (or wines in India). Enter the wine appreciation or education course, variants of which are mushrooming all over.

Tulleeho does an occasional two-hour workshop ("Tulleeho Wine Experience") in Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore "" the Rs 1,400 fee includes course material, snacks and, of course, wines.

In Bangalore, there's the "Wine Basics" programme initiated by Food Lovers magazine in association with Sula "" the 3-hour session costs Rs 1,450 and includes a pretty good dinner.

Then, there's the WSET (Wines & Spirits Educational Trust) Foundation course started in Mumbai by the KBR School of Wine (run by Sanjay Menon of Sonarys, a big wine importer) "" the 2-day/6-hour course costs Rs 8,000 and covers the curriculum prescribed by the internationally-recognised WSET organisation.

And last (but not the least) I was fascinated to learn of an international sommelier's course being started in Mumbai by the Indo-Italian Chamber of Commerce "" 11 days in India, five days in Italy (full-time) and a whopping fee of Rs 2.4 lakh (okay, including airfare and stay in Italy)! Makes one wonder.

Wine is a fascinating subject: I've been involved with this space full-time for some 12 years now, and never seem to lack for people to talk to at parties ""particularly the PYTs, who always want to know more about wines. But (and there's a big but), as anyone involved with wine knows, the more one learns, the more one realises how much more remains to know. However, it's never too late to start "" and wine is the only subject I know where it's a journey without end, and thoroughly enjoyable to boot! WSET's wine courses offered internationally range all the way to a one-year, full-time diploma, and one wonders how long before our market here is ready for this.

Wines I've been drinking:
I opened a bottle of Saint Clair Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc at 8,000 feet (up in Dalhousie) and was not disappointed: A classic aroma of ripe guava and a crisp balanced taste that lingered. Will relay reports of the Valdivieso Caballo Loco No 7 gifted to a former ambassador when he gets round to sampling it "" just hope he remembers my advice regarding decanting.

(al.chandra@gmail.com)