Still making wine

A lovely piece on dry martini that I once read went something like this: “Bartender A let the shadow of the vermouth bottle pass over the cocktail glass, while B merely bowed in the direction of France.” The reference was to how much vermouth one was to mix with gin when making a “really dry martini” — apparently, the less, the drier!

Fortunately, the same parallel does not apply when making wine — which is defined in some countries as “an alcoholic beverage made using only fresh grapes”. For the best quality wine, grapes are picked at optimal phenolic ripeness and pressed as soon as possible, in as inert a condition as possible — indeed, progressive wineries use gravity-feed rather than pumps so as to minimise oxygenation of the liquid at any point as this extends the shelf-life of the end-product.

 

Of course, the “fresh grapes” definition is not always followed, witness Amarone or Recioto wines from the Venezia region of Italy. Valpolicella is a wine made using three local grapes; Molinara, Corvina and Rondinella. If the grapes are allowed to wither in the shade they lose up to 50 per cent of their mass to evaporation — the wine then produced is hugely full-bodied, with lovely aromas and higher alcohol: Amarone. Using the same grapes, if you mix some grape spirit mixed with unfermented grape juice to the still-fermenting wine (and stop the fermentation) you get a strong, sweet wine: Recioto.

There are other ways to make wine; one could start with preserved grape juice and re-start fermentation using special techniques. Grape juice can be preserved for long periods, and this route frees the winemaker from the tyranny of the single harvest. However, wines made this way are unlikely to be able to compete in quality with conventionally-made wines, so purists can relax.

Then there are ad-mix wines, in which we in India specialise — stuff made using a combination of grape juice (generally from table grapes), sugar, alcohol, food colours and food-flavours, which make it possible to churn out cheap wines in weeks rather than the 3–6 months normally taken.

This is the stuff available in Goa at Rs 50 plus per bottle; while some call these “port-style wines”, I call these “wannabe wines” in that they have only a faint resemblance to the real thing (but “want to be” thought of as wine).

No matter how they are made, what’s interesting is that today people are looking at producing wine in the most unlikely places in India. I know of one enterprising soul who is starting vineyards at 5,000 ft near Coonoor, and of wineries coming up all along the leeward side of the western ghats all the way from Baramati down to Tamil Nadu and Kerala. Indeed, having recently been to Bidar (in northern Karnataka, 160 km from Hyderabad), the terrain is startlingly similar — perhaps superior — to that of Nashik, and likely to produce wines just as good (if not better) as anywhere else in India. If only states like Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh came out with wine-friendly policies…

Wines I’ve been drinking: The Four Seasons Viognier 2009 unveiled recently at a dinner for the Bangalore Wine Club is really classic: a hugely-expressive aroma, soft and balanced taste, and a nice long finish — just what the doctor ordered. Try it and let me know what you think.

Al.chandra@gmail.com