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Just In From The Grapevine...

...Indian wines are more real than the 'real' stuff. So, all ye wine lovers, eschew the label fetish.

Outlook Web Desk

Updated on:

  • Grover Vineyards' La Reserve vs Wynn's Coonawara Cabernet Sauvignon (a good Australian red wine that retails for about $16 in the US) My journal notes: "Tight contest. Five tasters present. Three vote for Grover; two for Wynn's. I voted Grover thinking (wrongly) that it was probably Wynn's. The Indian wine had a more classic Cabernet bouquet and a longer lingering lovely aftertaste."
    Score: India 5,
    Australia 3

  • La Reserve vs Robert Mondavi's Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon 1994 (the best year of the '90s for California Cabernets). Blind tasting with a friend. My notes: "Both of us agree, Grover wins, even though the Mondavi costs about $22 in the US. Mondavi is one of the biggest names in California viticulture."
    Score: India 2, America 0.

  • How about Spain? Okay, two months ago, a friend joined me for a blind tasting of La Reserve vs a Spanish Berberana Rioja Crianza, 1996, costing about $18 in the US or the UK. British wine writer Oz Clarke calls Berberana one of the better Riojas. No contest. Diary notes say: "Both of us say La Reserve wins by a knockout."
    Score: India 2, Spain 0.

    Readers may well say, "But what about French wines, the world's best?" Well, here's a little secret: they're not always the "worlds best" if you're spending below $40 a bottle. In the below $40 category, you'll often find better value for money from Chile, South Africa, the US, Australia and New Zealand (not necessarily in that order).But that's another story.

    Okay, India vs France. Let's go. Here are the results of my blind tastings of French wines vs Grover La Reserve plus Grover's ordinary bottling of Cabernet Sauvignon (from here on simply called "Cabernet").

  • The two Grover red wines vs b&g Cuvee Speciale (b&g stands for Barton & Guestier, one of France's biggest wine shippers. One can usually find their wines anywhere in the world from Alaska to Madagascar). Only one taster: Myself. Diary says this about the French wine (which I did not know was the French wine): "Light, acidic. Nice at first, but half an hour later it dies and gets like wine-flavoured water." The two Indian wines beat Cuvee Speciale easily.
    Score: India 2, France 0.

  • The two Grover reds vs b&g "Le Gascon" Bordeaux. Again, only the author did the tasting. Diary says: "b&g got itself a draw with the Grover regular cab, but was wiped out by La Reserve."

  • Score: India 1, France 0, Draws 1.

    By now, the more astute readers may be saying: "You're rigging the tastings for India by choosing poor French competition. Get a really good French wine in there. b&gs are just shippers' wines."

    Fair enough.

    In one blind tasting with nine people, I sent Grover's two red wines up to bat against a "grand cru" St Emilion, Chateau La Clotte 1995. (Look it up your vintage charts; 1995 was one of the finest vintage years of the '90s in St Emilion.) I don't know what Chateau La Clotte would cost in the US or the UK. My guess is about $25. There were a couple of other wines in this blind tasting, but they shouldn't have been there. Won't even mention their names.

    Result of this big match: of the nine voters, five picked La Reserve as the best, two voted for Grover's regular Cabernet as the best. Only one voted for Chateau La Clotte 1995! Keep in mind this was a blind tasting and the tasters were all experienced wine drinkers.

    Score: India 7, France 1.

    Let's add up the total scores for Indian wines and the foreign competition in all the blind tastings I've written about above.

    India 19, Foreign Countries 3, Draws 1.

    Valiant attempts at the real thing? Indian wines seem pretty real to me.

    Let's sum it up: some Indian red wines are world class in their price category. One of my crusades is to get Indians to believe that.

    Indian white wines? I have had many a nice glass of Grover white and Chantilly white. Marquise de Pompadour bubbly and Sula Brut bubbly are both extremely good Indian sparkling wines created by talented winemakers. Sula also makes a fine Chenin Blanc plus the Sauvignon Blanc white wine I described earlier.

    Hey, don't take all the above on faith. Drink. Conduct your own tastings. But make sure they're blind so you're not influenced by European labels with all those snooty words like "chateau" and "grand cru".

    And please, dear readers—especially food and wine journalists—never criticise or patronise Indian wines until you've done some serious tastings. Okay? n

    (Stephen Espie is a Bangalore-based freelance writer and retired American diplomat who has been in India for 19 years. He was the editor of Span magazine. He's been organising blind wine tasting since age 25. He was once wine editor of New York's Gourmet magazine. He also founded one of New York's first wine-tasting clubs, back when the thing to drink in Manhattan was a dry martini.)
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