A toast to the world's newest wine route

IOL News

29-04-2025

The vineyards at Sula, a massive wine estate north on Mumbai in India
Image: Supplied
Sheila Yasmin Marikar
At Nashik International Airport, there are so many posters advertising vineyards and wine tastings, you could be forgiven for thinking you've landed in Cape Town rather than India's west, 160kms north of Mumbai.
Yet in the past two decades, Indian wine production has, in fact, become a thing, and Nashik is its epicenter. The greater wine industry is taking notice: Sula Vineyards, India's leading winemaker, won the gold medal for cabernet sauvignon from the Global Wine Masters last May, the highest honor an Indian bottling has received at that annual competition. A viognier from Grover Zampa, which has vineyards in Nashik as well as Bangalore, in India's south, was named best of show at January's Wine & Spirits Wholesalers of America competition.
Beyond winning awards, Nashik is fueling a thirst for wine in a country where alcohol consumption is restrained and mostly limited to whisky. Its recent successes are not only resonating with locals but also generating renewed interest in international travel to India and bringing a new audience to the region. Ten years after Chandon, part of the LVMH-owned Moët Hennessy portfolio, opened its first winery in Nashik, the brand's president, Arnaud de Saignes, touts the region's 'potential to produce premium grape varieties' and calls India a 'dynamic market,' 'with a growing appreciation for high-quality wines.'
Inside the cellar at Sula Vineyards in india
Image: Supplied
New tour routes
'The concept of wine in India doesn't make sense, initially,' says Lisa Alam Shah, the director of Micato Safaris India, a luxury tour operator that's arranged subcontinental adventures for the likes of Hillary Clinton and the Ambani family. Part of that, she says, is because India heavily taxes alcoholic beverages, which makes it difficult for residents to access quality wines and spirits made abroad.
But her clients are increasingly 'looking for something new beyond the Taj Mahal and the palaces of Rajasthan.' So Shah has helped develop Micato's new tour to Nashik, on offer since last year. 'The word 'authentic' is overused, but that is what people want, whether they completely understand it or not,' she says. 'Nashik, right now, feels quite authentic.'
The highway that leads from Mumbai to the vineyards is modern, but sections of it involve winding dirt roads and wayward cows. (It's a good idea to hire a driver, as Micato does for its guests.) And while wine is central to the experience, it's hardly the full extent of what to do there. This is a place to sample brut rosé and cabernet-shiraz and then take a sunset boat ride on the reservoir of Gangapur Dam, one of Asia's largest. The region also houses Trimbakeshwar, a revered and architecturally significant shrine to Shiva that dates to 1755 and contains a special three-faced representation of the Hindu god, and the 2 000-year-old Pandav Leni Caves, once frequented by Buddhist monks.
The game changer
Chandon may be a name known around the world, but Sula Vineyards has put Nashik on the map for international wine lovers. Founded in 1999 by Rajeev Samant, a former Oracle engineer who returned home after quitting his Silicon Valley job, it produces more than 50% of the wine consumed in India.
Sula's production is encyclopedic: It makes more than 70 labels, from a pineapple-y sparkling rosé to an oaky chardonnay to a tannin-thick cabernet sauvignon that could pass for something out of Napa in California. Sula's Nashik tasting room-billed as India's first when it opened in 2005-features a bar that can easily accommodate 100, a gift shop filled with kitschy T-shirts (think: 'Partners in Wine') and a theatre that plays a short movie about Sula's rise.
Since 2010 it's also operated a vineyard resort, the Source, which looks like a cross between a Spanish hacienda and a Tuscan villa - albeit with an intricately painted elephant sculpture in the lobby. Suites look out onto vineyards of chenin blanc and groves of queen of the night, intoxicatingly redolent when they blossom after dark. Instead of mimosas at breakfast, there's a 'build your own chai' bar and an accompanying 'chaiwala,' which is essentially a mixologist but for tea. The rates start at about R1850 a night.
'My dad was born in Nashik,' says Samant of his connection to the land. While attending Stanford University in the 1980s, he visited Napa Valley. A decade later, his father showed him a parcel of land he was thinking of selling. 'It reminded me of California,' Samant says of the area's verdant rolling hills and dirt roads. 'I said, 'I don't think you should sell this. I'm going to try to do something here.''
Now more than 350 000 visitors pass through the tasting room each year-as of April, more than 331,774 have come through in 2025 alone. 'The notable spike reflects the growing popularity of wine tourism in India,' says Sula representative Kinjal Mehta, as well as the fact that the cooler months are the most popular time to visit Nashik.
While the majority of visitors are domestic, Sula says that the share of international visitors is growing. On a recent Thursday evening, the tasting room was packed with swillers of all stripes, from sari-clad grandmothers to polo-shirt-wearing bros broadcasting big bachelor party energy. A sign hung near the cellar door bears a believable, albeit unverifiable claim to fame: 'More people taste their first wine here than any other place in the world.'
A caveat of selling wine experiences to a new-to-wine market, however, is that the 30-minute tastings feel very Wine 101. 'Don't drink it like a shot,' one employee admonishes during my visit, dispensing sparkling rosé into glasses, then clarifying that it's not in fact made from roses. Around a horseshoe-shaped bar, heads reverently nod. Afterward, many guests head to an on-site pizzeria bustling with parents and kids, washing down slices of paneer-topped pies with jammy zinfandel. Instagram opportunities abound.
Sanket Gawand in the cellar of his Vallonné winery. He cut his teeth making wines in Bordeaux and now produces some of India's best.
Image: Supplied
Wild West for world-class wines
Sula is not the only game in town. About a half-hour drive from the Source is Vallonné, a humble winery producing some of the best wines in the region, owned and operated by Sanket Gawand. A Nashik native, Gawand cut his teeth at wineries in Bordeaux, France, and Bologna, Italy, before opening his own outfit. He also serves as Vallonné's winemaker and runs its tastings, which take place in the cellar amid stainless steel tanks.
He manages a team of 10 that harvests nine lakefront vineyards by hand. Vallonné's viognier and Anokhee cabernet sauvignon stand up to their French inspirations more so than any other wines sampled in Nashik this fall-in my opinion-but Gawand admittedly lacks the public-relations prowess of more popular neighbors like Sula.
'We're not good at marketing,' he says, with an amiable shrug.
Maybe he doesn't need to be. The four rooms at Vallonné's upstairs inn with quaint furnishings, vineyard views, priced at about R1300 per night-are consistently booked, and its restaurant serves what might be the best food in the region. The all-day menu, which is also available to walk-in guests, includes succulent lamb kebabs and toothsome Hakka noodles made all the better with a glass of Vallonné's crisp chenin blanc.
Diamonds in the rough such as Vallonné are best reached with the help of a local guide like Manoj Jagtap, a Nashik native who began conducting tours 10 years ago under the moniker 'The Wine Friend.'
'I've got a group of eight Aussies coming tomorrow,' Jagtap tells his charges - myself, my mother and a family friend - midway through a recent day trip that included Vallonné, Chandon and Grover Zampa. 'During the winter harvest season, it's nonstop.'