. Kapil ("call me Kapil," he insists) offers me a choice of three Bangalore eateries and on my insisting it has to be his call, opts for Tchi. The boutique Chinese restaurant on Edward Road, in a converted first floor of a residential house, has many corners made for undisturbed conversion. We are quickly past the ordering and into sipping the well-chilled Shiraz rosé wine from Grover Vineyards as I pose my first curiosity: doesn't his smoking interfere with his wine drinking?
He readily cites the example of Michel Rolland, the number one enologue (wine consultant) in the world who has long been guide and family friend of the Grovers. "Michel smokes three to four cigarillos a day and steals a few cigarettes from me when we are together." But Kapil draws a line. There is no smoking in the tasting room and adds in self-defence, "I don't have a bad palate, both for wine and food."
The latter is evident from what he orders. The Freddie prawns, (the chef's speciality) for starters, is authentic Indian Chinese, rather lavishly smothered in spices, as are the antecedents of the restaurateur who has moved from Kolkata, the original home of Indian Chinese. The vegetable spring rolls are nicely mild and balance the prawns and in between sips of rosé, I ask my second well prepared question: does serious wine drinking, which needs recognising many subtle attributes, go with Indian food which is invariably very spicy?
"You must match the wine with the food. You need a wine with structure (what lasts) and body so that it can stand up to the spicy food. For that you need more extraction, longer contact of the juice with the grape skin, to get all the good things from the grapes. Michel calls this (looking at the rosé in his glass) a 'serious' rosé."
Kapil is clear that between the winery and the grapes, it is the latter that overwhelmingly matter in making good wine. You can spend and get the best machinery for the winery but it takes years and years to grow grapes right. The foremost wine making nations of the world have been at it for thousands of years and "we have been at it for 15 (on the slopes of Nandi Hills near Bangalore). We started planting wine variety grape (as opposed to table grapes) vines in 1981 and are the first Indian wine maker who experimented on growing the right grapes the right way."
That would make it difficult to challenge the leaders but challenged they have been and thus has emerged the duality in the world of wine making, between the new and old world wine makers. The foremost among the challengers is Australia, which has been at it for 50-60 years. The other new world players are the US, Chile, South Africa and Argentina. Brazil and India are at the doorway. So India has not actually arrived? Not really, indicates Kapil's body language. People are still surprised to learn that we make wine. But a different kind of surprise is also emerging. Kapil narrates a story whose dramatis personae must remain unnamed. In a blindfolded test with one of Grover Vineyard's flagships, a leading wine critic just failed to get the country right. Indian wine can now at times be surprisingly good!
But it still has a long way to go. India consumes 3.75 million litres of wine a year that can be called so (priced at Rs 350 plus), whereas the world consumes 24 billion litres. But Indian wine makers never had it so good. "Consumption is growing at 30 per cent a year and will keep doing so for the next 30 years," asserts a supremely confident Kapil. The flood of imported and Indian wines in Indian shops, particularly at the outlets in new retail chains, has been a boon. The world of wines, shelves and shelves, has arrived, encouraging you to experiment and try out names. The benchmark buyer now goes in for bottles in the Rs 550-600 range. Better times are coming as large retailing takes off in India. There is also a bonus in slow regulatory relaxation as in Maharashtra which has allowed wine to be served by eateries which do not have a licence.
Our eatery does not need any good food rating. The main course of toasted black pepper beef and the fish in Beijing sauce, with the Chinese greens and a second bottle of rosé, go down splendidly. Food sampled and approved, Kapil goes on, "We are gearing up for this growth, acquiring more land for vineyards but the bottleneck will remain the quality of grapes." And on this there is a long term uncertainty, the Indian weather. In temperate climates, the vines don't grow in the winter months. But in India they keep growing round the year. "For a part of the year we don't get a crop but the plants keep growing. It doesn't get rest. So we really don't know how long they will live."
The global good news is the new world growers are doing very well. Australia has become the number one in the London market, which has emerged as the wine capital of the world. "The global market for good wine is booming , which makes it easy for the likes of us. Plus, the new world wine makers have managed to demystify some of the attributes of good quality wines." The big difference between the old and the new is that the former continues to name their wine after the region of origin and the challengers after the grape "varietal". The aim of the old world is to keep good wine synonymous with certain geographies whereas the new world says good wine is made from good grapes. The cultural battle between the old and new has been highlighted by the transition the new world is making from cork to screwcap, which saves 5-7 per cent of the wine from going bad and makes no difference to quality. Kapil is clear that old world growers in France and Italy are suffering by hanging on to mystique and rejecting technology.
There is one French word though which Kapil takes seriously. It is terroir which captures in itself all the natural barriers of soil, climate and variety that make all the difference in grapes. But there is a clear future for those who persevere in producing quality grapes. He loves this example of two vineyards on either side of the same road in Burgundy. One produces grapes that yield wine priced at 100 Euros and the other five! So there is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow if you know how to get there.
