Sula Vineyards, under Rajeev Samant's leadership, has put Nashik on the world wine map. A major contributor to Sula's success is the Californian winemaker Kerry Damsky. Lea Terhune outlines the history of Nashik's entry into the global wine list after meeting the master who helped Nashik discover the power of Sauvignon Blanc.

Dutcher Crossing Winery overlooks the verdant panorama of Dry Creek Valley, a subdistrict of California's famed Sonoma Valley. An azure sky over green and yellow vineyards and a fragrant, cooling breeze promise a perfect day. Seated on the shaded wooden picnic bench outside the wine tasting room, Kerry Damsky talks about his grand passion.

Damsky, 51, is a master winemaker. He has received gold medals for his expertise in growing, harvesting and fermenting grapes and blending fine wines. His passion for this complex art has made an impact in India, where Damsky helps guide the development of Sula Vineyards in Nashik, in the western state of Maharashtra.

Sula is owned and operated by Rajeev Samant, who holds degrees in economics and industrial engineering from Stanford University and worked at software giant Oracle before his interest in wine culture led him back to India and into the wine business.

Damsky, from the San Francisco Bay area, was about to study anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley, when his father brought home a technical book on wine making. Damsky found his calling there. He moved to Sonoma, where he took the requisite science courses, later finishing his studies in viticulture and enology, that is, grape cultivation and wine making, at the University of California at Davis.

"It was an exciting time," he recalls. The California wine industry was just starting to hit its stride. In 1973 Stag's Leap Wine Cellars won a blind tasting in France. A California Cabernet beat Bordeaux's top first growths. "It was like, sacre bleu!" He earned his stripes by running "a million gallon winery" near Lodi in the Central Valley. Then, at the age of 24, he became winemaker at a 25,000-case winery, San Pasqual, near San Diego, where he could indulge in innovation. He married Daisy, gained recognition and eventually moved back to Sonoma where he continued to build his wine making reputation. He formed a consulting firm, Terroirs.

Terroir is a French term for the sum of factors that affect growth in a vineyard: soil, elevation, climate, geographical features, orientation to the sun and so forth. The name conveys Damsky's dedication to "the entire ecology of fine wines" in his custom growing, wine making and executive consulting services. Winery start-ups and vineyard development are his specialty. He now consults for 13 wineries and is a partner in Dutcher Crossing and in his own label, Palmieri, besides being Sula's consulting partner.

India first entered Damsky's portfolio in 1995, when Mumbai businessman Sunil Patel and Nashik-based Hambir Phatadri asked him to come to India. By that time, Damsky says he had become "a corporate guy" involved in the business side of wines. "I was bored with my job. I wasn't making wine anymore, and I thought, 'I want to go to India!' "

He visited some vineyards in Nashik, known for its grapes, but saw only table grapes. In a nursery set up by the French, he found some Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay and Pinot Noir grapes with fruit still on the vine. "The Pinot and Chardonnay were horrible," he says, "but the Sauvignon Blanc looked really good. So that gave me an idea." It was clear to Damsky that "the goal here was to figure out two things: what grapes would grow well in India and what wines would be appropriate for Indians."

After considering several ways to start the winery, he sent a partner, a viticulturalist, to assess the terroir. They agreed that "if Sauvignon Blanc would work, then Chenin Blanc would work." He thought, "These are new customers, new clients, new consumers of wine, so we need to make it pretty easy."

California, along with Australia and South Africa, ushered in what is called New World wine-making. This borrows some things, including grapes, from Old World winemakers, chiefly France, Italy and Germany, but uses technology to make bold new statements. It is the New World style that Damsky exemplifies. He explains, "We were looking at the American model. If that was a model that made sense then we should do friendly wines to start off with. We imported Muscat Canelli, Symphony -- which is a University of California, Davis, hybrid that is half Muscat and is like Riesling, that grows well in warm climates -- and Chenin Blanc."

Both Patel and Phatadri had lived in the United States and grasped the potential of the wine business in India. Phatadri planted a vineyard, but circumstances curtailed their original winery plans.

When, two years later, Damsky was introduced to Rajeev Samant by a mutual friend over lunch at Glen Ellen, Sonoma, it was a match made in heaven. Samant was looking for a winemaker to develop vineyards and make wine on his land in Nashik, and Damsky, by this time, knew the Nasik terroir well. Samant wanted to plant Zinfandel, a variety abundant in California. He took the cuttings back to India in a suitcase. Phatadri's vineyard provided the Chenin Blanc.

Damsky started going to India regularly to nurture the new enterprise. "We did Chenin Blanc for the domestic market. We wanted to get to the next level, so we started to do Syrah -- or Shiraz as it's called in Australia --Cabernet, Zinfandel and Sauvignon Blanc," Damsky says.

He sent a California winemaker, Tyler Peterson, to work Sula's inaugural vintage from start to finish in 1998. It was chaotic, Damsky says, but "they did a great job. We bottled our first Sauvignon Blanc and Chenin Blanc and the wines were amazingly good. They were sound. And they were clean wines, they had lots of acidity, they were bright. We sort of astounded the market."

Another California winemaker, Scott Sizemore, was sent to oversee Sula's second vintage. In 2000 Sula hired Ajoy Shaw, who is now the lead winemaker. Shaw did a training stint working a harvest in Sonoma.

After Sula wines hit the market, the challenge became keeping up with the demand. "The biggest problem we had at Sula was growth for the first years," says Damsky. "We sold out of everything. We could sell three times what we made." Samant suggested they import some wine to meet the demand while the Nashik vines matured. That is how Sula's Satori brand was created.

"We don't have any Merlot planted, and this was when Merlot from Chile was cheap. And it was a vehicle for many years," says Damsky. Sula also imported a coastal Chardonnay from California. Meanwhile, "they were planting as fast as they could."

Damsky explains that because of the Indian climate, special techniques for growing grapes in tropical latitudes are employed. "The vines never go dormant, so you have to prune twice. You have to do this in any tropical latitude. Brazil does the same." Harvest time is late January for early white varieties and mid-March for red.

A heavy pruning is done to force the grapes into dormancy. A second pruning is done at the end of the monsoon and the remaining buds produce the fruit 150 days later. "The combination of growing grapes in the Indian latitude plus the 500- to 600-metre elevation allows you to grow premium grapes," he says.

Intense sun is a factor to consider in both Indian and Californian viticulture. "You have to be very careful in India because of the sun, while here in California 80% of the time you don't have burning heat. If you have searing heat, it just bakes the fruit. So in California we are going back to more canopy shading. In India, you don't want huge canopies so that it's fully shaded, but you want filtered sunlight."

Besides steering the wine making for Sula in India, Damsky also teaches at the Grape Processing & Research Institute, near Sangli, which is jointly sponsored by Pune's Bharati Vidyapeeth and the state government. He's helping them design a curriculum that will train farmers to grow wine grapes and make wine, and convert at least some table grape growers to wine grape growers.

There is some resistance, but Damsky has answers: "People say, 'How am I going to make any money at three to four tonnes per acre when I am used to getting 12 tonneper acre?' Your inputs are going to be less, you're not going to be spraying all the time. We don't want disease, but we aren't concerned cosmetically. We want smaller berries. You don't have to water as often. If the quality is high, you are going to be getting more money for the fruit. Therein lies the difference. You are going to be paid a much higher rate."

Such education is the key to success, he says. "Is it possible for India to make world-class wine? My answer is yes. It takes time. And what do we need so we can do that? The answer is trained technicians. You can't be sending consultants all the time, you need training." A positive upshot of Sula's success is more work and better income for local farmers who supply wine grapes.

Sula has also entered into an agreement with Nashk's ND Wines. Sula now operates the winery and produces the ND brand from a portion of the grapes while gaining a 30-40% access to all the ND grapes, which include Sauvignon Blanc, Cabernet and Syrah.

Sula, in six years, has become a sizable winery, producing 100,000 cases a year. And they are selling everything. Says Damsky: "You've got Rajeev and I putting together a winning style that works, in terms of New World styles -- really handcrafted wines based on technology -- and each year the wines get better and better." He adds, laughing, "But there's no competition. There will be competition. Everyone knows that."

He says that Seagrams, now a subsidiary of Pernod Ricard, is building a winery. In recent years these companies have bought out some important Napa and Sonoma wineries and know their wine business. "Five years from now there will be five Sulas, maybe 10 Sulas. So now is the time for growth," Damsky says. And the Indian consumer has woken up to wine. Even if only the affluent 1% of the Indian population buys wine, that is still 10 million people. Also, Sula wines are affordable. The bottom of the line red and white wine brand, Madera, sells for less than Rs 300.

Growing the business means exploring new technology, such as a French technique called micro-oxygenation to enhance wines fermented in stainless steel tanks, fine-tuning oak casks used for the reserve wines, or adjusting picking times. "Now we pick ripe, as I pick here, and this year we have very supple tannins, ripe flavors. The wines that we made this year -- while they don't exactly taste like they are from Sonoma or Napa -- they almost have a Washington State brightness. It's just slightly different, because they are from India."

Most important, they are good enough, Damsky maintains, to be sent to influential wine critic Robert Parker or Wine Spectator for review. Sula wines are served at a growing number of upmarket restaurants in the United States, where sommeliers like the idea of having a reliable Indian wine on their lists. More recognition will come when Sula achieves ISO certification, the stamp of a world-class operation.

Challenges remain. "Storage is still a problem," Damsky says. "We keep wines cool and refrigerated at the winery, but once it leaves the winery it's out of Sula's control." Improper storage in India's high temperatures will quickly spoil a good wine.

Samant agrees. Besides educating distributors about the importance of proper handling of wines, he says, "we are working with our distributors to air-condition a part of their warehouses, as that's really the only way to deal with the heat." He points out that Sula was the first winery in India to refrigerate all storage tanks, crucial for protecting the wine. Damsky feels that the uneven or inferior quality registered by some Indian wines at tastings may be attributable, in part, to poor storage.

There is more work to do, but India is undeniably on the global wine list, and Damsky is having a good time doing his part to keep it there. "Wine making comes naturally," he says. "It's a passion that works well for me." It seems to work well for Sula, too.

About the Author: Lea Terhune is a freelance writer based in California and a former editor of SPAN

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