<b>Kishore Singh:</b> One for the road

How much wine is too much? Sadly, I was unable to satisfy my wife's curiosity but I did tell her that at the Four Seasons winery in Sahyadri Valley, too much wasn't much at all. The previous evening in Delhi, we had attended a birthday party where I knew neither our host who had thrown a "surprise" for his wife that she had taken care to dress for, nor indeed the "surprised" birthday girl - Delhi's generous hospitality is sometimes stretchable to include complete strangers - but I did know enough guests, each of whom said, "Hey, buddy, have a glass of wine". By the end, my wife said, "You've had too much," which was hardly a good thing, since I was also the designated driver, but at Roti village in Baramati, I wasn't driving anywhere, so too much wasn't so much after all.

It did seem like a lot though if you started counting the empty glasses. Driving up at lunchtime, some kind soul was at hand with a glass of sparkling rose that hit the spot in one thirsty draught. But at the lunch table, it was a sip of this and a quaff of that, since winemaker Abhay Kewadkar had pulled off a food pairing that ranged across the winery's premium Ritu all the way from a sauvignon blanc to a viognier, before being served a selection of cabernets, and finally a dessert wine which wasn't - a dessert wine, that is.

But we hadn't dispensed with the drinking, since Kewadkar had a captive audience that wasn't going away anywhere except to sleep, so was commandeered instead for a tour of the winery all the way from grape-crushing to the storage stills that we could also see while walking to our guest rooms. But what's a wine tour without tastings - so you'll excuse me if I burp after an acidic gulp of sauvignon at two weeks in the still, a chenin at a couple of months in an oak cask - before we were wheeled off to a "laboratory" for another tasting (at which point I wouldn't have been able to drive at all). Since this was a clinical trial, there was no more food to get in the way as one took it on the chin and said salut, and then had more than the advisable quantity of a vintage sparkling rose because the winery had created a limited quantity only for guests - hence, hic, bottom's up.

"So, okay, I was a little bit tiddly," I confessed to my wife - but, really, it was no more than my mother-in-law might have been on a good day before settling down for a sundowner. Following the example of others, equally proud relatives who were no slouches when it came to imbibing the nectar of the gods, and with wine for the asking - and not just with the dinner courses, but in between courses, too - I stuck loyally to the barrique reserve all the way to bed with promises to wake early and go walking in the vineyards, which seems, on hindsight, like the fool thing only drunk people would pledge themselves to. Or, maybe someone had suggested that the grapes on the vine were literally wine on the tap.

Meanwhile, there's breakfast where they might pair the chorizo with a cabernet sauvignon. Or, if they don't, they could hardly grudge one a glass of their finest sparkling before lunch, which will resume with the whole pairing hoopla all over again. I can hardly wait not to drive.