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Photos By:: Adil Arora
 For 100 years, Gstaad Palace, one of the last family-owned Swiss luxury hotels has epitomized the art of Swiss hospitality amid the breathtaking beauty of the Swiss Alps, where Chef Peter Wyss has created culinary delights since 1972, balancing contemporary influences with the rich freshness of traditional ingredients and recipes. Advocating the use of fresh seasonal ingredients to create gourmet delights across all five award- winning restaurants at the Gstaad Palace, Chef Wyss was at ITC Maurya recently as a part of the Gourmet Diaries series created by the UB-owned Four Seasons Wines and the Celebrity Chef Series by ITC.
Four Seasons was the brainchild of liquor baron Vijay Mallya who decided to set up a spanking new facility in Baramati 10 years ago to produce his best expression of Indian wine. To underscore that he was deadly serious about this venture, he lured Abhay Kewadkar, the renowned winemaker from Grover Vineyards, to drive the wine business as Chief Wine Maker and Director, Four Seasons Wines. Simultaneously he bought Bouvet Ladubay, a French producer making Four Seasons the only Indian producer with a French collaboration.
Nearly ten years on, with national brands such as Four Seasons and Zinzi available on the shelves and an export brand Ritu for the UK market, Four Seasons wines are now an established player in the Indian wine arena, with sales crossing 100,000 cases last year, making it perhaps the second largest player next to the leader Sula Vineyards and close to Grover Vineyards in terms of volume. So it was great to be invited to represent delWine for another evening of Four Seasons Gourmet Diaries at the West View at the ITC Maurya who co-sponsored this program along with the Consulate of Switzerland.
Gourmet Diaries
Gourmet Diaries, as explained by Abhay, was an attempt by Four Seasons to widen the Indian wine drinkers’ horizon by focusing on wine and food pairing – a good wine can box above its weight provided it is paired correctly with supporting and complementing foods rather than with clashing or overpowering accompaniments.
And what better way to showcase it than to have a series of wine dinners around the country prepared by a celebrity international chef! This year, in partnership with ITC Hotels, Four Seasons invited Executive Chef Peter Wyss, to visit India and treat wine aficionados in 8 cities around the country to his culinary skills.
The evening started off with an informal interaction session with Abhay Kewadkar who was understandably bullish about the strong performance of Four Seasons in building a brand from scratch to one which is today nationally available and recognized with accolades along the way. Abhay highlighted in particular, the pioneering work being done by Four Seasons in the Baramati area with grape farmers in their immediate objective of having 2000 hectares of wine grapes under contract.
 Over a glass of the very agreeable Ladubay Bouvet Brut Rose, I asked Abhay about the international marketing efforts of Four Seasons. He said they had launched their export brand Ritu in the UK and were very happy with the progress. When asked about the wisdom of a multi brand strategy so early in the company’s life, he replied that in addition to some legal and brand name issues abroad, the Four Seasons brand did not convey anything about its Indian roots. The management felt Ritu would be a great differentiator in the highly competitive UK wine market. That’s why they took this unusual step of having a separate brand for export even though the varietals are identical to the Indian market offering.
A few days earlier, the press had carried articles about the management change in Four Seasons parent company United Spirits with Diageo replacing Vijay Mallya in the driver’s seat. When asked about this development, Abhay was upbeat as he believed they would be able to leverage Diageo’s expertise in the wine business to Four Seasons' advantage both at home and abroad.
Swiss Evening with Four Seasons
Chef Wyss set the ball rolling with a Cappuccino soup with Mushrooms and Thyme –a light and flavourful soup with the mushrooms pairing very well with the fruity Ladubay Bouvet Brut Rose.
Following this was the Sea Bass served with an asparagus crust and tomato marmalade on a bed of light- as- air mashed potatoes. The quality of the sea bass was top notch, the clear white flesh indicating that not too long had elapsed since its transit from the Arabian Sea. The tomato marmalade was simple in its execution but divine with the sea bass.
I wouldn’t say the same for the Four Seasons Sauvignon Blanc which was paired with the Sea Bass. I have never been a great fan of the Indian Sauvignon Blanc (though a recent tasting of Sula 2013 held out great promise) and the Four Seasons offering displayed the usual lack of fruit on the palate and a higher degree of acidity than comparable imported counterparts.
The Four Seasons Barrique Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon was definitely a much more refined wine and showed the class of the winemaker in handling a difficult grape like the Cab Sauv. This barrel aged wine had good fruit on the palate, the tannins were under check and the after taste was fairly long. Definitely one of the top Indian red wines today, the Barrique Reserve was paired with a quartet of roasted lamb chops with pepper jelly and Barolo sauce with shallots. I have eaten lamb at the West View many a time over the last couple of decades and I can say this lot was easily the best. Small and compact but deliciously soft and flavourful, my lamb chops were gone in a trice!! In the words of Abhay Kewadkar, it was “palate magic” on the part of Chef Wyss.
For dessert the Swiss Chef lined up Lindt (what else would a Swiss chef use!!) bitter chocolate with a lemon mousse and raspberry ice cream which I was able to pair with some more of the Ladubay Bouvet Brut Rose which counterbalanced the bitterness of the chocolate quite adeptly.
There was no doubt that the quality of the food in the West View kitchen that evening was at a different level. Anil Chadha, the General Manager of ITC Maurya said this was the basic idea behind the Celebrity Chef Series initiated by ITC, “After all, it’s just that little bit extra in ingredients or an out-of- the- ordinary technique which differentiates a great dish from the rest and if our chefs can pick up these little nuances from the masters, the Delhi diner will be the gainer” he said.
Kudos must undoubtedly be directed in the direction of Abhay Kewadkar for taking the time out from running an international wine business to focus on the place where the fortunes of a wine are either made or broken – the dining table. Together with Chef Wyss and the team at the West View, Abhay has ensured that the Gourmet Diaries has been a resounding success and has made us eagerly await the next edition.
Arun Batra
Tags: Four Seasons, Gourmet Diaries, Chef Peter Wyss, Gstaad Palace, Four Seasons Wines, Celebrity Chef Series, Vijay Mallya, Abhay Kewadkar, Bouvet Ladubay, Zinzi, Ritu, Sula Vineyards, Grover Vineyards, Baramati, Diageo, ITC Maurya |