Wine drinking anytime, anywhere is as such fun, but wine hunting today in India is a nuisance. If anything, I am surprised that people actually go through the pain of sifting through the ?desi? outlets that sell liquor to either blind you or else give you hangovers that will surely discourage the weak-hearted. Little surprise then that countries like China and Korea drink a lot more wine than we can even expect to in the next decade.

I am a qualified sommelier, which is nothing more than jargon for licence to drink. Studying about alcohol, I thought, seemed like the best way to burn time and money. I thought it would be cool to know how to order wine when dining all the teeming millions of girls who would swoon at the very mention of a sommelier. All it did was that now I take a lot longer to find the one bottle in the supermarket to share my solitary microwave dinner with. I haven?t grown much smarter since. You will still find me spending a lot of time looking at bottles, turning them around in my hands, examining them, even shaking them, before I finally try and shoplift one.

These here are some wines I have tried recently. Not all are available in supermarkets. Conversely, some may not be available in hotels as they don?t deem them worthy. I say pish tosh. A wine is as good as it drinks. If you like it, it?s wine. Here then is my current pick of groovy wines to try.

Brancaia Tre

If you have followed my writings generally, you will see this one brand mentioned ever so often. While I do agree that I do this partly because some day I feel that the Italy-based Swiss family who makes the wine will recognise my effort and reward me with a small but accessorised sports car, I also mention this wine because when it comes to bang for your buck, this is the heaviest ammo that at least my meagre means can buy. A nice, deep, rich red from the heartland of Italian wines, Tuscany, it is a great baby Super Tuscan called Tre, Italian for three. It is a mix of three grapes coming from three different vineyards. It is also the third wine made by this famous house. That?s three good reasons to drink it.

Hardy?s Riesling/ Gewurztraminer

This Aussie whitey is not a wine to sit and discuss. Au contraire, this is the perfect wine to have when you have other things to discuss. Believe it or not, that is a complement and now you are really looking forward to what I have to say when I am insulting a wine! I had this wine at a lovely brunch the other day? a hot day with the sun out in full force in the capital, making everything shine and shimmer. The heat was bordering tolerable and I felt the immense need to cool down. I flirted with some oaked Chardonnays, but they only seemed to burn me from within and I ain?t talking sin! I eyed a third bottle which happened to be this oft and easy little number. Within minutes I was a few gulps and glasses down. I persisted with this wine for the entire afternoon. I even added some chunky cubes of ice to my wine and the wine managed to endure all ? the aromas reminded me of roses and lychees, the taste was crisp and crackly and lasted a fair bit on the palate. Nothing exceptional, but for the prices (Rs 600 or so), and its easy availability, this is definitely my choice for the next summer brunch I host.

Lis Neris Piot Grigio

This is an Italian white wine to be reckoned with. This is the wine that you won?t see coming. It jumps out at you from nowhere, smacks you centre with awe and stuns you with suavity and then fades away gradually. The wine is nothing like regular Pinot Grigio, something that most people see as a cheap and aperitif style high-acid wine. This wine has length, complexity, nutty richness, mineral notes. It is a full bodied white wine and worthy of any hotel list. I recently shared a bottle with Aishwarya Nair, the younger of the Leela family, and both her and I were smashed impressed. We were also smashed, but that was a few bottles, oops, I mean, courses later.

Chateau Haut-Brion

This wine ideally doesn?t need an introduction. As a wine, it is among the top five wines of the region called the Left Bank of that famed wine area, Bordeaux. The reds of Bordeaux are counted among the top wines of the world year after year. Nothing seems to be able to match them in their eclectic balance and harmony of strength and elegance. It is like being tortured by a very hot lady, or gentleman, depending on your tastes. This is exactly the wine to have when you wish to stop all else and make a beverage think about whether you have been a good person and do you really deserve to drink something so divine. The wine is steeply priced in most hotels (way out of reach of supermarkets for price and placement reasons), so not exactly your daily tipple, but if somehow it is, then may I be the first to propose marriage, or some other wine-centric alliance.

Vin Opera Lambrusco

Once again I jump from out of the palace and into the streets where most of us mortals live. This Italian wine is what is drunk here, or should be. It is the easiest wine to enjoy and every time I have served this wine, I have had nothing but requests for more. It is red, it is sweet and it is sparkling! None of those three things are strange, but to find them all in one wine is not just rare, it is almost bizarre. The wine is best had chilled and also in amounts that will disqualify from getting behind the wheel. Very affordable and very appealingly addictive, keep this little surprise for your next party?the guests will never see it coming. Trouble is that if you don?t have enough, very soon they will all be going.

So folks, next time you are out shopping or lifting, do keep an eye out for these wines. Also, if you see someone hanging around the liquor shelves and toying with the bottles, do come up and say hi to me. Cheers!

?The writer is a sommelier