Let?s face it, wine isn?t as exciting as say, Baywatch, or Sex and the City; take your pick, depending on your sexual orientation. Wine is perhaps somewhere between Saas-Bahu serials and Friends. Browsing through a wine list then becomes the mundane equivalent of reading the stock listings, or the daily funnies, once again depending on your sexual orientation.
Now, hotels are supposed to be run by professionals. The food is made by chefs with a good few years of toil over the grills, the cocktails are blended by a man who has been entertained by many a bar-fly and so, logically, the wine list must be put together by someone who has lived the passion of the grape. But somehow it would seem that we have entrusted our wine lists to people who are even more inept than our politicians. Not only do they write the most unimaginative wine lists, they are also incorrect, inconsistent and full of pricing lapses…and let me not even comment on how unaffordable they are!
So, what are the criteria to judge a good wine list? Very simply, these:
1. Variety: The list must cover different regions and wine styles. Extra marks if innovative wine styles and new regions are being showcased.
2. Price Range: Variety is not just in wine types, it is also in price. Having similar styles at different price points is sensible. Not only does this encourage more sales, it also makes for more variety in a person?s favourite wine category.
3. Something New: While it is great to see some popular brands on a list, they shouldn?t be the only thing present on the list. Sadly, as most hotels buy from one or two importers, all their wine lists read like photocopies except for different fonts. How boring! I give full marks to a wine list that doesn?t show wines solely from the usual suspects like Brindco, Moet-Hennessy and Sonarys.
4. Innovative Listing: I am tired of seeing lists segregated by colour and country. I wonder how they order from such wine lists at the UN. The Taj is perhaps the only one which follows a slightly different pattern of writing their list but I am not sure how reader-friendly it is; part is divided by regions whole part is divided by grapes. 5. Big Names: I like impressive names which attract oohs and aahs, like social names-dropping. But similar to that latter malady, what is actually drunk is more commonplace. Outlets should have more moving stock and less place-holders for wines they put on their list.
6. By-The-Glass: This is one major area in need of overhaul. What I wouldn?t give to not be served crappy plonk like Tarapaca, Fortant, Chinkara and Mouton-Cadet as a wine by the glass. The ITC has banned many of them but other hotels continue selling them without as much as a slight fuss. How, really? The Imperial and Shangri-La in Delhi have an impressive range which is also well-preserved and served at the right temperature.
Imperial hotel in Delhi and Four Seasons Hotel in Mumbai get my top vote for well written wine lists. They may not be very explicit but definitely have a sense of ?clean? appeal to them. Un-cluttered and straight-forward, they make wine ordering a likeable proposition. Some of the Taj properties and Shangri-La do a good job too, as also, to some extent the Hyatt and the Park groups in Delhi, Calcutta and Mumbai. ITC manages a simply OK effort all across ? considering that they are a five star ? and could get a decent run for their money from stand-alone outlets like Diva in Delhi, Indigo in Bombay, and Olive in both! Properties in Bangalore, Hyderabad and Chennai have a constant problem with wine sourcing and this remains a constant complaint. In spite of that, some hotels like the Ishta and the Novotel must be lauded.
So there you go folks. I come across yet again as a vengeance-ridden vino while hotels will continue to flog plonk wines. If only my article could actually initiate a change…