Sula Vineyards, Nasik

Vineyards

In your busy life, when weekend comes, all we want to do is sleep and eat. But for people like me, we crave for experiences and learning new things. One of such experience was a visit to India’s premium wine company, Sula Vineyards. Sula established by Rajeev Samant and his partner from Calfiornia Kerry Damskey in the city of Nasik. Nasik offers one of the apt weather to grow grapes which are much needed for the wine making process. These grapes are different than the one which we eat as fruit, due to thickness of the skin. Sula is available in all types (Red, White, Rose, Sparkling & Dessert wine) and is now being sold across the world.

As commonly known, wine is of two type, White and Red. Apart from these, there is Rose and Sparkling wine. Many of us might get confused with Sparkling wine and Champagne, for them, Champagne is one which is made from the Champagne region in France. Whereas any other region can make Sparkling wine. In simple words, all sparkling wine is not a champagne but champagne is sparkling wine. Anyways moving on to Sula Vineyards, it is a place where you can see the plantation, understand the process, taste 6 different wines, dine at their restaurant or stay for a night overlooking the vineyards.

Wine Barrel

Staying in their bungalow is indeed an amazing experience but also expensive one. For people low on budget, go for a one day trip and just learn more about wines. Sula Tour is around a 1-2 hour long where they explain you the entire process of making the wine, storage, plantation later on leading to wine tasting. They give you 6 wine to taste, out of which first will be a sparkling wine, Next is 2 white wines followed by 2 Red Wines, ending with the sweet Dessert wine. While tasting, they also explain the 5 steps of wine tasting known as Colour, Swirl, Smell, Taste and Savour.

Sula Wine

First you start by identifying the colour of a wine by looking at the glass near to the light. See the color, texture and if sparkling wine, then sparkles. With the help of light, you will be able to determine more about the wine color n texture.

Then comes swirling. (Note: do not swirl sparkling wine because then the sparkles will be gone). Swirling helps you in determining the alcohol content in the wine. After swirling, if wine on the side of glass (legs) are thick means there is more wine. If you can’t swirl then trick is to keep it on table and do it by holding the stem of a glass.

After swirling, smell the wine. Our most primary senses is nose and smelling the wine has its own pleasure. This step will helps you to determine the ingredients used in the wine or end up taking in the flavour of wine.

Second last step is taste. Now this taste doesn’t mean gulp the entire wine. You take a small sip of wine, move across in your mouth and then gulp it. This process though sounds simple but for me it was the difficult one. As you are used to gulping down everything, you will not be able to move the wine across your mouth to know the real taste of the wine. You need to keep it in your mouth and move across so that each of your senses can taste the wine and find those things which makes wine so good.

Choose Your Wine

Lastly, after all this, you will drink the wine, rather savour the wine. It is an interesting to know about wine in such a depth. The usual drinkers will not know so much about alcohol and that’s what makes wine a so discards drink. Not anyone can have wine, people who about wine can pair it with right food.

More then wine, this excursion is also about the road trip around Mumbai and being around the greenery. Since I went during winters, grapes where not there. Else the sight of grape plantation is indeed enchanting. During the Feb-Mar month, Sula Vineyards host the Grape Stomping season, where you get to stomp the grape with your barefoot in a wooden barrel. Along with this, Sula also host Concert & event during harvest seasons Beginning of the year is best time to visit Sula but this is also year around destination for a day visit.

For something different to do on weekends, go to Sula Vineyards to know more about the wine and it’s making.

P.S. There is a lot of wine making and processes which I have not featured in this blog, for that I will suggest you to visit vineyards around you.