Wine is a curious beverage—more discussed than drunk. There is a simple reason why people will wax eloquent about a lovely bottle that they once shared with the winemaker’s family while sitting under the shade of an olive tree along the idyllic Mediterranean coast with nothing but a baguette and some butter for snacks, and yet, back here on home turf, they will order a whisky, a beer, or even a cocktail, without once hesitating to stop and peruse the wine list.
The reason is quite simple—pricing. In India, most wines on hotel wine lists are priced so far out of our financial comfort zone that one would have to be an absolute eccentric or Elon Musk (wait, is that a redundancy?) to be able to afford a decent bottle without breaking the bank. Wine is an expensive commodity to begin with, but when it is marked up by a factor that hotels and restaurants usually would employ for something as banal as a can of cola, the economics just don’t add up.
A bottle of an aerated beverage costs them, say, on the higher side, Rs 20. When we pay Rs 150 for it, it is a huge margin, a little over 700% of a mark-up. Yet, we cough it up; after all, we are sitting in a fine establishment—the chandeliers, China and crystalware won’t pay for themselves. Then, there is the service staff, definitely a few notches higher in their service standards and eloquence than the Charlies at your local watering hole. So, we figure, it’s okay to pay a premium; it’s not just the drink but the experience we are being billed for.
Shift this line of reasoning to wine and the argument doesn’t seem as sound; nobody wants to pay five to seven times over the price of a bottle. And yet, hotels keep trying to peddle very average wines—quaffers that are thirst-quenchers at best—at exorbitant prices. As for the seriously good wines, well, they were already ridiculously expensive, thanks to local taxes, and then with hotels’ cushy margins, it’s cheaper to fly abroad and order it.
Well, now we—and by we, I mean Delhi, because Mumbai and Bengaluru have already had some places with great (read: sensible) wine-pricing formats— have a place where we can lounge and wine without the hurtful price hit. It’s the recently soft-launched wine bar at the Taj Mahal hotel and it will occupy the space that once housed Wasabi. The space is designed with a lovely vibrance to it— fresh, youthful, effortless. The interiors, from the layout to décor and soft appointments, exude the elegant charm of a sophisticated yet nonchalant studio to sip on something special.
The wine list is a formidable tome, which is a lot to say, considering that Delhi hasn’t had a stable excise policy for two years running and the good wines are becoming concerningly rare to come by. The place will serve 43 wines by the glass and one can choose between a small or a large pour. They are all preserved with no oxygen contact and at the right service temperature, which should ensure that the experience is good from the first glass right until the last. The glassware is exquisite. As for the food, largely, it comprises a long list of small plates, thanks to their in-house chef who recently returned after a heady gastronomic sojourn in Spain. He was dishing out some absolute authentic hits from the land of Tapas and Pintxos with the choicest of ingredients (my favourite was their red label jamon).
The best bit is the wine pricing, which is very reasonable. Even the expensive wines here, I believe, will be at a significantly lower markup than other similar standing places in the city. In other words, a sensibly priced wine list, at last. Congratulations to team Taj on being the first in this regard; I only hope other hotels and restaurants follow suit.
The writer is a sommelier