Wine to me is always about a story, an evoked emotion. Anything else, and it is a lesser wine. If I told you that a certain wine was made in WW II trampled vineyards in the hands of a dying winemaker, the value of that wine would increase manifold and so would the enjoyment that you would inhale with every sip. An industrial wine, consequently, is never romantic. It can be efficient, even consistent and controlled, but never romantic. If you don?t believe me, try making love to an inflatable?err, ahem, nevermind.
Moving on swiftly, recently I visited an upcoming vineyard and winery project near Pune. I didn?t know what to expect: all I knew was that we had tasted the wines at my office a few weeks earlier and the team had appreciated them. The other sign was that two of the seven entities behind the winery whom I had met a few weeks earlier had come across as pretty pleasant blokes. The kind of folk that, were you to per chance accost on a flight, you wouldn?t mind engaging in a conversation with them, which can be loosely translated to mean that both Kapil and Allessio were erudite, charming, intelligent, and most importantly, didn?t have body odour!
The trip was nothing fantastic, the usual tale of cattle and camels with 1bhp traffic strewn all over the road, the entire journey a zig-zag through traffic that was slower than time itself, a meandering path of patience to the final destination.
Arriving at the winery, I could feel my heart swell with excitement. Maybe it was the clean air, maybe the agony of a three hour journey that had seemed to go on endlessly, or maybe it was the fantastic glass structures that were staring me in the face: Signifying honesty and transparency, fragility and yet form. One building almost mirrored the other, as if symbolising a consistence of thought.
Either ways, it was magnificent. But good wine, my friends, is not made in a winery. Anybody who tells you that is not a winemaker; he is a scientist with a white lab coat. He may be everything to wine, but he is not a wine lover. And the vineyards is where I headed off to first. If you see enough, very soon you get to a stage where just by looking at the condition of the vineyards, and how they are kept you can make a reasonably substantial guess as to how the grapes will be.
Over here, nothing has been done locally. From the tanks in the wineries to the stocks, and their graft-roots, all have been imported, and from the best in the business. Even the soil analyses were done abroad and not in local labs. In other words, if the wine were to still turn out watered down or smelly, then it could only be the winemaker?s fault or else the notion that the region really can?t make great wine, or any wine at all.
The wines, thankfully for all, were fantastic. The winemaker is a reputed Super-Tuscan winemaker and knows his stuff. He was coaxed to give it all up and come here by two Italian brothers.
These two Italians had two Indian brothers for friends in Delhi. The Delhi troupe met with another two set of brothers from Akluj who made a lot of it possible on ground. Among these seven, they formed a bond that is thicker than blood, a band of brotherhood that is as transparent and strong as the very structures that envelope their winery.
Fratelli, Italian for brothers, then, was a very apt name for the project. How else would you describe an effort that requires so much money, so much time, and so much sacrifice, and all without the promise of nothing in the end? Well, once I had met them and they had shared their story with me, I agreed that Fratelli was a good name, but, I argued, ?The Madmen? would have perhaps been more fittingly apt!
So today, here, I raise my glass of Fratelli Chenin, in toast to all the madmen, here and before, who have put great wines on our tables! C?n c?n!
The writer is a sommelier