|
March 27: Nashik was victim of the nasty wrath of nature barely a day or two before the crops were ready to harvest with lashing rains splitting the plumped up eating grape but wineries like Sula came to the rescue of the farmers due to their social responsibility and political pressure from the leaders of the community and offered to buy grapes at prices at which the farmers recovered their costs and possibly made marginal profit as well, writes Subhash Arora after talking to several stakeholders
I have been meeting Aubert de Villaine, co-owner and winemaker of DRC (Domaine Romanée Conti) in Burgundy at the World Wine Symposium (WWS-now called VDEWS) at Villa d’Este on Lake Como in Italy since 2009 when the WWs was started. He is a rock star winemaker of Burgundy; DRC is the only winery that has an appellation of its own. The premier vertical tasting of DRC wines last year at the VDEWS cost €2,000 but was completely sold out.
With such reverence for the wines and the winemaker of DRC, one would expect him to be snooty and snobbish. But the soft-spoken Aubert is always very humble.
I couldn’t resist asking the legend after the tasting how he could always remain so calm, humble and approachable. His answer, ‘I am just a caretaker of the vineyards and land. No matter what and who we are, we can be humbled any time by nature which shows its prowess at every vintage, and in the process giving us challenges and wines with different character year after year,’ touched my heart.
From Burgundy to Nashik
This is precisely what happened this year to the grape growers of Nashik and other parts of Maharashtra when they were getting ready to harvest the crops. The Vintage Reports were upbeat. During my visit to SulaFest, the wineries and vineyard owners I met seemed pleased as they expected to harvest good quality and good quantity of fruit.
But I could hear the alarm bells ringing when I read on the FB Timeline of Kailash Gurnani, winemaker and co- owner of York Winery in Nashik on March 14. The rains and storms not only damaged the crop but most of the eating grapes started splitting making them unsalable.
York Winery came out fairly unscathed by the rains. Kailash Gurnani who had panicked with the unexpected torrential rain says, ‘It was ok in the end. We received some compromised Fruit but overall there was no significant damage. Yields this year were much lower due to the rains in November during flowering. Some vineyards had to be picked earlier than the ideal ripening levels to prevent rain damage. That worked out well for us.’
But the table grape farmers faced the wrath. Says Rajeev Samant CEO and Founder of Sula Vineyards , ‘Wine grapes are less affected with such rains. Unfortunately, any sort of fungi in the table grapes makes them un-shippable. They are plumped up before the harvest and get split with water going straight to the berries. We had already harvested our whites and 80% of our reds. Fortunately, there was a nice breeze after the rains that dried off the berries. We will have a perfect reason for whites but the reds could have some issue of concentration.’
Table grapes is where wineries like Sula and Renaissance came to the rescue of the farmers to help them recover at their costs and possibly make nominal profits, thanks to the pressure from the political leaders and government officials. Sula has been the biggest benefactor, agrees Shivaji Aher, owner of Renaissance Winery which also agreed to crush bout 400 tons for them. She expects Sula to have crushed about 3000 tons of the table grapes (though Rajeev puts this estimate at 1500 tons during my telecom) and puts the total damaged crops rescued to 5,000 tons.
Both Rajeev and Shivaji Aher who is also the President of AIWPA stressed the social responsibility angle. ‘The State government is happy. We are glad we could help because ‘the leaders who have given us the benefits are from the community and it is not good economics for us to see the farmers suffer unduly because of the nature.’ Both Sula and Renaissance bought the grapes at around Rs. 15-17 whereas the cost of growing is around Rs. 12, according to Aher.
On the sidelines, Rajeev also added that the 2 new screw- type presses they had bought last year increased the capacity came in handy. The crushing capacity for the low ended wines has gone up from 50 tons a day to 200 tons.
Baramati and Sangli etc have a different story. There are no wineries like in Nashik, where cheap wines are also being made and these could help buy grapes. But Four Seasons wine grapes also got affected. Abhay Kewadkar says, ‘Our Sauvignon Blanc was already harvested but the Chenin had staggered pruning and so some grapes were still on the vines. They will need a better selection. Similarly reds were affected to some extent. But they didn’t buy any table grapes as this is done by another division making grape alcohol. According to Aher, a significant number has been crushed by them to make grape brandy, though he is not sure where the grapes they bought will be utilised.
With wineries like Prathmesh, Flamingo, Venus, Rajdheer and ND busy crushing table grapes for Sula, a major catastrophe has been averted. It has also brought the spirit of co-operation between producers and farmers. What also helped the scenario was that the Maharashtra government had instituted excise duty on bulk wine last year. This meant that though the wines were excise-duty free when made and sold in the State, bulk wine bought by wineries like Sula started attracting excise duty making it unviable to use .
The consensus in the wine industry is that with the growing demand of wines, the supply chain becomes more important as the shortage is predicted during the next 2-3 years. Maybe this gesture by Sula, Renaissance and the other wineries at this juncture might be helpful at the times of shortages.
Subhash Arora |