Sula Wines’ Rajeev Samant gets Bollywood support.
By night, Rajeev Samant, 44, parties at Mumbai clubs with supermodels and Bollywood friends like director Rohan Sippy. By day, he’s the restless chief executive officer of India’s largest winemaker, Sula Vineyards.
We’re having lunch in Tulsi, a new Indian restaurant in Manhattan. Bollywood, he says, reflects — and influences — India’s changing view of wine. “Until five years ago, if a woman drank in the movies she was either a fallen woman or a vamp,” Samant says with a smile as we sip his aromatic Sauvignon Blanc, one of four Sula wines available in the US. “Now a glass of red in a film is a cool accessory. It’s socially acceptable and sophisticated.”
Sula Vineyards’ bright yellow sun label makes appearances in Sippy’s latest cocaine crime thriller Dum Maaro Dum (2011), and Nikhil Advani’s romantic Salaam e Ishq: A Tribute to Love (2007). The question on my mind is: Are Samant’s wines any good?
The fruity 2010 Sula Chenin Blanc tastes simple, sweet and bland, but works well with tangy scallops with red pepper sauce. I prefer the zingy 2010 Sauvignon Blanc. A smoky, soft 2010 Shiraz is better with tandoor-grilled lamb chops than oaky flagship 2008 Dindori Reserve Shiraz ($22). I was surprised, but definitely not stunned by the level of quality.
An urbanite who grew up in Mumbai, Samant studied at Stanford University and worked in finance at Oracle before chucking corporate life to return home in 1993. During a wedding in Nashik, he was captivated by a 20-acre parcel of land owned by his father. Samant tried farming organic mangoes there, then teakwood, tomatoes, roses. The aha! moment came when a friend from the US west coast asked if Samant was growing wine grapes.
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By 1999, he’d enlisted California winemaker Kerry Damskey, and planted vines, including zinfandel cuttings from Sonoma that Samant carried to India in a duffel bag. “The customs officer only cared about what they cost me. Nothing, I told him, and he waved me through,” says Samant, chuckling.
Sula quickly expanded and now produces 450,000 cases from 1,500 acres of vines. Samant drew drinkers by opening India’s first tasting room, then two restaurants. His annual music festival, SulaFest, draws 3,000 fans with rock groups like Petri Dish Project. The latest? A nearby 20-room eco-resort on a road dotted with water buffaloes. “At least one member of every family in the nearby village now works for us,” Samant says.
Establishing a wine culture in India sounds like an uphill task. For one thing, most retail stores and warehouses aren’t airconditioned. Yet, the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India predicts the nation will drink 14.7 million litres next year, more than triple 2008’s 4.6 million litres.
The economic downturn took a toll. Many producers, even large ones, miscalculated, presuming they could sell big volumes without paying attention to quality, Subhash Arora, president of the Indian Wine Academy, says in an email.
As rivals contracted, Samant grew to become the biggest and most consistent producer. Now others are following, aiming for higher quality. Reva Singh, publisher and editor of wine magazine Sommelier India, highlights ambitious boutique vintners, including Indo-Italian venture Fratelli and Vintage Wines’ Reveilo.
As Samant and I sip green tea, he tells me that French champagne house Moet & Chandon has been buying Nashik grapes for a premium fizz to be launched in 2012. “Within the next decade India will be a 4 million-case market,” he says. Bollywood will help.