This was my first experience of the sort; and a magnificent one to say the least. It was a place for wine-tasting on the first floor of Rampart Row. Integrated with the Kala-Ghoda festival, the deal was simple and attractive: you had to pay 300 bucks and for that you got unlimited wine. What we soon found out was that pieces of bread, cheese, often stuck on sticks and dressed with olives and pineapple were regularly available. Slices of pizza were made and distributed: and they were pretty well made.
The entire experience went on very smoothly since Subho-da was there, and he would tell us which wines to have first and which ones to follow and about the reserves and so on. Since wines are my rather favorite drink items, let me describe the whole experience in some detail.
We started with the white wines, namely a Sauvignon Blanc. It is a dry white wine, and was pretty good to taste. Then we had many other white wines, mostly dry and less in sugar, like chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon and several more which I do not remember at the moment. It turns out that these are all brand of grapes, mostly named by the regions of France where they are mostly cultivated. It also turns out that you always need to go for the white wines first, and only later can/should you have the red ones. Once you go to red, its almost impossible to come back. Well, I do not have such sophisticated tastes to claim that I see and understand all these differences, but I still can make out strong good wines from mild ones, and good ones from bad! :)!
There were several other things that I got to learn. Firstly, that in session on wine tasting, you should have water (ideally, also gargle a bit with water) before tasting the next wine. This act removes traces of the previous wine from your mouth. Also perform a similar ablution with the glass. Some people I found were actually, washing the glass with the wine they were going to taste, in order to completely remove traces of the other wine. Well, I hope I never go to that extent. Anyway, sloshing: red wine typically needs to be sloshed. This causes the wine to breathe, or in more scientific terms, "get oxidized". This often dramatically changes the taste of the wine for the better. Another practice is swirling. This is mainly intended to see the strains of wine as it slides down the glass. If it slides down slowly leaving streaks, it means the wine has high sugar content. A wine with less sugar should fall down rather smoothly without leaving streaks. That's a lot of stuff to know!
We gradually made the transition to the red wines, through a rose wine. I had a Vermont (I hope I got this correctly), which was sweetish. I found out that I liked the sweetish wines as well, in fact probably a tad more than the usual! Besides there was a sweet and mellow wine called Indian Nectar from the Pause wines that was very nice. A Temperanillo was a strong and less sugary wine from this company. Shiraz is another brand which is very nice, but at the moment I can't recall it's taste. Then there was this concept of "reserves", which is usually a wine from a very good variety of grapes from some very good harvest in a particular year. At the very end, we had gone to the reserves: from where there was no coming back. Other wines wouldn't simply taste any good after that!
We also saw a wine preserver. They come in two varieties, and the need to preserve is evident. Prepared and processed wine is stored in vacuumed bottles. If its kept exposed for a long time, it simply gets fermented to vinegar, and then even though you can use it for cooking, drinking is out of the question. Hence, the need to preserve it. There were two varieties: one cheaper, intended for home use and could preserve it for several days, while the other, mainly intended for use in restaurants and stuff, could preserve for a week or more, and cost around 35K. WOW! So much to know. We also found out that decent Indian made wines are now available for around ~500-600 rupees a bottle. It really does seem that the Indian wine market is opening up.
Well, I spend two and half hours of blissful time there. I came back a bit early, to discuss something about work. The others stayed longer. But by far, this was the best experience I had with wines in India so far!
The entire experience went on very smoothly since Subho-da was there, and he would tell us which wines to have first and which ones to follow and about the reserves and so on. Since wines are my rather favorite drink items, let me describe the whole experience in some detail.
We started with the white wines, namely a Sauvignon Blanc. It is a dry white wine, and was pretty good to taste. Then we had many other white wines, mostly dry and less in sugar, like chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon and several more which I do not remember at the moment. It turns out that these are all brand of grapes, mostly named by the regions of France where they are mostly cultivated. It also turns out that you always need to go for the white wines first, and only later can/should you have the red ones. Once you go to red, its almost impossible to come back. Well, I do not have such sophisticated tastes to claim that I see and understand all these differences, but I still can make out strong good wines from mild ones, and good ones from bad! :)!
There were several other things that I got to learn. Firstly, that in session on wine tasting, you should have water (ideally, also gargle a bit with water) before tasting the next wine. This act removes traces of the previous wine from your mouth. Also perform a similar ablution with the glass. Some people I found were actually, washing the glass with the wine they were going to taste, in order to completely remove traces of the other wine. Well, I hope I never go to that extent. Anyway, sloshing: red wine typically needs to be sloshed. This causes the wine to breathe, or in more scientific terms, "get oxidized". This often dramatically changes the taste of the wine for the better. Another practice is swirling. This is mainly intended to see the strains of wine as it slides down the glass. If it slides down slowly leaving streaks, it means the wine has high sugar content. A wine with less sugar should fall down rather smoothly without leaving streaks. That's a lot of stuff to know!
We gradually made the transition to the red wines, through a rose wine. I had a Vermont (I hope I got this correctly), which was sweetish. I found out that I liked the sweetish wines as well, in fact probably a tad more than the usual! Besides there was a sweet and mellow wine called Indian Nectar from the Pause wines that was very nice. A Temperanillo was a strong and less sugary wine from this company. Shiraz is another brand which is very nice, but at the moment I can't recall it's taste. Then there was this concept of "reserves", which is usually a wine from a very good variety of grapes from some very good harvest in a particular year. At the very end, we had gone to the reserves: from where there was no coming back. Other wines wouldn't simply taste any good after that!
We also saw a wine preserver. They come in two varieties, and the need to preserve is evident. Prepared and processed wine is stored in vacuumed bottles. If its kept exposed for a long time, it simply gets fermented to vinegar, and then even though you can use it for cooking, drinking is out of the question. Hence, the need to preserve it. There were two varieties: one cheaper, intended for home use and could preserve it for several days, while the other, mainly intended for use in restaurants and stuff, could preserve for a week or more, and cost around 35K. WOW! So much to know. We also found out that decent Indian made wines are now available for around ~500-600 rupees a bottle. It really does seem that the Indian wine market is opening up.
Well, I spend two and half hours of blissful time there. I came back a bit early, to discuss something about work. The others stayed longer. But by far, this was the best experience I had with wines in India so far!
