They say the future belongs to those who will have it. I have seen the hands that will herald in the future for wines in this country and it seems all good. Allow me to explain why.
Let?s admit it, we are not born into wine. Ours is not a culture where being dunked at birth into a vat of wine could be considered baptism of any kind. Elsewhere in the West, the life of a king, from the time he is born to the time he ascends the throne, can pretty much distill down to what wine his lips touched when he was born.
In our culture, we have a great history of cuisines, and of conquests of entire kingdoms for want of a certain spice. We have endless fables about how a certain dish won over a visiting dignitary, or how a dish came to become the symbol of a region or a city and the ensuing hardships to guard recipes and the likes.
Well, wine may not have such a coloured history behind it in our country, but it certainly stands to have an epic future. I know so, and believe so, not because I am suffering from an incurable form of self-appreciative hallucination, but because I find the professionals in this country appearing very poised to carry us gently towards the world of wines.
I cite a few examples of this; more, as and when I meet, will find mention. The first was Abnash Kumar, who holds fort at the Taj Man Singh in the capital. I have seen this young man grow in gradients, and then in exponential leaps. He has a thorough knowledge of wines and is one of the best people around to suggest something that will go down well with your meal. My word may not account for much but recently when he won the Boutinot Bursary conducted for managers of his level (and also those with much more experience), he displayed maturity beyond his years. His plans on how to introduce a certain wine into a new nascent market were well lauded by the biggest of wine heads in the UK and as a prize, he has been invited to visit the vineyards of one of the Boutinot wineries in the Rhone valley, this coming harvest. I am sure he will return further enriched with new ideas to infect us with. I can but look forward to any and all such possibilities.
The other person is Prashant Gupta. He is the chief of all things food and beverage at the recently opened Oberoi in Gurgaon. Why are such lovely properties shifting so far south? It is the Delhi crowd that is spoiled and not used to the long haul car rides; for Gurgaon-ites (or is it Gurgaon-ians), it was a matter of cultivated and inculcated habit to travel for hours in bumper-to-bumper for anything that could even qualify as a sandwich.
Now as the balance shifts, I find Delhi stuck with lame joints posing as food destinations with the only things connecting them to, or even allowing them to surpass, true fine dining are their pricing strategies. Lamentable, but nevertheless, Prashant is a good reason to hit this beautiful new property. Their all-day dining is called 361 (yet again another one upping the Delhi neighbourhood?s 360) and is perhaps the biggest stretch of a single restaurant outside of a food court, and even pitched against them, it is sizeable! What is more impressive is the wine list that Prashant has put together. He has made fine drinking affordable. One of the few people in the industry who have made wine selling a profession and yet maintained a passionate zeal for it.
Oberoi continues to have among the best-priced lists in the country (well, Prashant?s may be the finest) and I love the idea of including the heavy taxes (30%) as part of the mentioned price. It is one thing to buy a bottle for R5,000 but another eye-popping thing to be paying 30% tax on top of it in the final bill!
And then, lastly, I turn my attention, closer to home, to the latest addition of five stars (maybe six or seven would have been merited) in the Delhi crown, the Leela. Rajesh Namby is an F&B stalwart and I have known him for a few years now. Our interactions may be limited, some even brief, but all have been spirited and memorable. He is decidedly old school, but he is, above all, fun. His is a disposition that puts you at ease, and opens you up to whatever he will suggest, for you can tell that even as he describes it to you, he is reminiscing the time he last tried it. I don?t think he ever talks without experience, which means that his list is a representation of his finer tastes. And then, he is well complemented in this task by David Milliere, the only true French sommelier working this side of the Meridien, in our country. Anybody else French and in India is a glorified tourist. David knows his stuff and don?t let his soft-reserved nature throw you off the expanse of knowledge that this Indophile Frenchman truly is.
All these people are young and exuberant, charged, and full of interesting anecdotes and facts, and to even talk wine to them can be an intoxicating experience. I am not writing this piece with mentions many to win my free meals?journalists and columnists are often blamed for such?but rather because I wish to share that for those of you who still find wine intimidating, reach out to any of these fine gentleman and you will soon find yourself sipping and swirling like an old hand?or is it, nose?
The writer is a sommelier