Andrea Valentinuzzi, Winemaker, Synthesis SN Cdivalentinuzzi A&C
He is still to see the Taj Mahal, the dream destination of every foreigner and almost every Indian. That aside, Andrea Valentinuzzi, Italian winemaker who is in India to supervise the making of Vintage Wine?s Reveilo wines, has seen nearly all the vineyards in the country and in the journey to get there, has seen India in select cities and the villages. It is the wide disparity that he sees between them that has him dazed. ?I get off at the airport and the first thing I see is the crowds. On the roads, pedestrians move cheek-by-jowl with vehicles and there are animals too. It is a bizarre sight at first,? he says, laughing. ?I wonder how the drivers get their vehicles across. Surprisingly there are no angry voices or fights.? Now, is he sure about that? ?At least not the kind I see back home in Italy.?
India was on Valentinuzzi?s mental radar for a long time, especially since he had traversed across continents except Asia. ?Our picture of India is from books and old stories. It was when I met Yatin Patil (director, Vintage Wines) that I realised that there are several religions here and cultures too. I was a bit amazed to see the shy ways of the village girls in the vineyards and the bold, fashionably dressed girls in the cities. India lives differently in its cities and villages, I realised.?
With Indian wines becoming a popular industry, what are his views on it? ?The wine industry here has grown in the last three to four years. When I first came, the wines I sampled tasted of sweet oxidised fruit juice. The wines in different bottles of the same vintage tasted different. That is a challenge that the industry has to overcome.?
Valentinuzzi says, if only the vineyard owners went about their jobs ?passionately? instead of doing it as a ?business-making venture, there would be a ?huge difference?. ?Wines can be grown anywhere in the world. Even Korea produces wines. But an Indian wine should have its indigenous characteristic simply because no other place in the world can copy India?s soil and climatic conditions. The vineyard owners spend a lot of money in buying the most sophisticated and latest equipment from abroad. Just having a Ferrari does not make you a Schumacher,? he says. Valentinuzzi says Indian wine companies don?t pay any attention to details.
Like, the bottles, corks are not of top quality, he says. ?Packaging is very important for that is the first thing a consumer gets to see. If the cork is of substandard quality, which in most cases it is, the wine is spoilt. A year?s work is wasted just by a bad quality bottle and an even bad cork.? There are less than eight varieties of Indian wines compared to over 60 in Italy, says Valentinuzzi. ?The market is looking for new varieties all the time. Indian vineries should seize the opportunity.? He realises that the picture he has painted is grim. ?It has a huge potential and for that the industry must not gloss over the details. India has tremendous potential for 100% growth in the next few years.?
And how would he define a good winemaker? ?The one who can preserve what is in the vineyards in the bottle as much as possible. There is no magic involved here,? he says.