Photos By:: Adil Arora
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| Jacquinot discussing wines with members |
Delhi Wine Club (DWC) has established its credentials enough to have been invited to launch several new restaurants like Zest, Kainoosh and Italia in DLF Emporio, Spaghetti Kitchen in Select City Mall, Olive Mehrauli (in its new avatar) and The Med at Radisson etc.
Wine dinners have also been organised to introduce wines like Gaja, Tenute Silvio Nardi, Gunderloch and Dr. Loosen and recently Graf van Schoenberg, a VDP-member premier winery from Franconia.
 Therefore, it was with no hesitation on the part of the club in accepting a request from Ajay Gothwal, the North India Training manager of Seagram’s Nine Hills that they wanted to launch their new range of Reserve wines with the DWC members and get their genuine feedback.
Infusion is a relatively new restaurant in the Gurgaon commercial hub of DLF Cybercity in Phase-III, specialising in fusion Indian cuisine. It was chosen as the venue in order to order to match Indian food with five of their wines- Chenin Blanc, Sauvignon Blanc, Rosé Shiraz and the new wines being launched- Reserve Shiraz 2008 and Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon 2008.
Jean- Manuel Jacquinot is no stranger to the club. A winemaker dinner had been organised a couple of years ago at the Park Hotel where the regular range was presented. Living in Champagne, he shuttles between Reims and Epernay to work with wineries in Champagne. He has also worked in several other countries including earlier in India when he had worked with Pimpane Winery, now-defunct co-operative producing sparkling wines. He has been involved with the Nine Hills project since its inception.
 Wine is a product where people have individual tastes and one can agree to disagree, they say. The evening had several such instances. Interestingly, people were quite evenly divided about which wines they preferred out of the regular range of three wines. Gianluca Brusco, the Commercial Counsellor of the Italian embassy was very impressed with the grassiness and the asparagus-like flavour of the Sauvignon whereas Elisabetta Tarczewski clearly found Rose as her favourite. Many had found the Chenin Blanc as clean, crisp and dry as a refreshing change from the usually sweet offerings from Nashik. The dryness in the Sauvignon Blanc –Jacquinot informed us that it was a zero sugar wine-was clearly a big achievement as it was quite fruity and zesty.
People were as passionate about discussing the food and were divided in their opinion. Some people though the ‘Jugalbandi’- a combination of Norwegian Salmon and John Dory fish was the clear winner while others were equally disappointed with the preparation. Perhaps the presentation of dishes was not as innovative as one expected from a restaurant named Infusion. The service was as polite as can be expected anywhere but it was not seamless and was in jerks, and the restaurant is apparently not used to handling 30+ guests at a time with pre-plated 4-5 course meals. However, it gets an A for efforts.
 Mr Parvez Patel, the exec vice president of Nine Hills based in Nashik had come especially for the launch and duly did the honours of opening the first bottles of Shiraz; the Cabernet was unscrew-capped by Jacquinot. Aged for 9-12 months in French barriques, both the wines showed their character and were clean. The full-bodied Shiraz with its spiciness and fruit character of plums and black cherries was the clear winner of the two and was the first one to be polished off.
As Jacquinot who had been talking about each wine individually, explained later, the terroir of Nashik is really well suited for Shiraz but the Cabernet can leave some green notes at times. It would also be fair to say that the tannins in the Cabernet were still not tamed yet and would make it a food wine with red meat-that was not part of the Main Course in the Menu this day, giving Shiraz an edge in terms of food pairing.
 Priced at Rs.500 a bottle, the company seems to have followed a uniform policy of pegging their prices closer to Sula and keeping the confusion minimal, whereas at Rs.750 each for the new Reserve range brought out that evening is ready to compete with Dindori from Sula. It does help take Indian wines to a notch higher in terms of quality and price and it would be very interesting to see how the Indian consumer reacts to it, especially it is flirting with the imported wines at similar prices. But as the vines get older and the fruit quality gets better, Nine Hills can be expected to keep on climbing the quality charts.
Subhash Arora |